


The Affairs of Dragons

by palalife, Takmarierah



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Dragons, Drama, Enthusiastic Consent, Erik is a Dragon, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Sex, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Plotty, Romance, Sex, Slow Build, Xenophilia, angst and horror elements, consent issues (uninformed consent), initially unrequited love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-10
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-11 20:38:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 61,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/482681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palalife/pseuds/palalife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Takmarierah/pseuds/Takmarierah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Charles sees the dragon on his balcony, he suspects that he's losing his mind. When he starts hearing voices, he's certain of it, and the realization that magic is real is little comfort when these newfound abilities threaten to destroy his life. He has no choice but to accept his enigmatic neighbor's offer of training in exchange for a promise - that he will repay that favor, when asked to.</p><p>Like many promises in the world of magic, however, this turns out to have unexpected consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the [X-Men: Reverse Big Bang](http://xmenreversebang.livejournal.com/) challenge.
> 
> With thanks to **Theredoormouse** , who was an excellent cheerleader and research-rodent, able to provide answers for a wide variety of remarkably specific questions, and to **Tahariel** for being there, for Brit-picking, and for being a great sport about suddenly having gobs and gobs of fic to beta.
> 
> And of course, without **Palalife** ’s original prompt and continuing inspiration, none of this would exist at all. <3 Check out her [art masterpost](http://palalife.tumblr.com/post/29149764799/xmfc-reverse-bang-prompt-1045-dragon-erik-and), even (especially!) if you decide not to read the story!
> 
> \---------
> 
>   
>  **Warnings** : allusions to 1960s cultural norms, some clinical depictions of mild gore, some dark themes later on, and the big one – **interspecies sex**.
> 
> A note to clarify: by “interspecies sex” I do indeed mean “dragon sex”. I won’t be tagging this as “bestiality” because I think that implies a certain lack of consent, and both relevent parties in this are fully intelligent and capable of discussing their physical differences and preferences. If, however, this is still a personal squick of yours, then please take the warning seriously! (Though I invite you to consider that this part is fairly brief, and far away. I’ll warn again later!)
> 
> \---------
> 
>   
>  _Note_ : More chapters forthcoming over the next few days, to total ~60k of existing fic. More remains after that, but the end is nigh.
> 
> Also, for the sake of attribution: while the vast majority of the art here is Pala’s (thank you again, oh my god, I neither expected nor deserve such an amazing quantity of quality art!), a few of the drawings are mine.

 

1

 

Charles spent more time with books than people to the point where, when he’d lost most of his furniture in the move to London, he’d decided to simply make do with what he had, leaving only a few essentials and strategically placed piles of books. It was a temporary arrangement, and it had persisted for three years.

The single remaining armchair provided an excellent view through his balcony, and when he returned from the lab in the afternoons he liked to enjoy the advantages of living high above the rest of the neighborhood. He lounged there, wearing the teddy bear slippers he’d received as a gift from his sister without any self-consciousness. The breeze that slipped in through the partially open balcony door was brisk with autumnal chill.

Faded echoes of chatter and traffic drifted up from the street below while Charles drank his hot tea, engrossed in a book propped against his thigh. It was nineteen sixty-five: there was a wall that split Germany, men had drifted through the vacuum of space, and the world might erupt into thermonuclear violence at any moment.

Charles’ life, by contrast, was uneventful.

 

2

 

Or at least, Charles’ life was uneventful until a dragon appeared on his balcony.

 

3

 

There was no question of what it was.

The long neck curved with an elegant strength, muscles firm and strong beneath gleaming black scales. Its wedge-shaped head bristled with horns, and its eyes were a catlike green, sharp and alert as they judged the distance to the street below, blunt nose swaying gently as it looked about with an unhurried deliberation.

It was difficult for Charles to focus on, as if it were enveloped in heat shimmer despite the fall weather. His eyes watered, fighting to squint closed, but he held them strained open to catalogue every detail.

It was _huge_. Not like a building or even most automobiles, but perhaps a smallish horse; the size of the balcony had been a major selling point for the flat and this creature had to squeeze sideways to fit, arching its lithe body up over the railing to stand with its forelegs on _his_ balcony and its hind on his neighbor’s.

 

 

Something scalded his chest, and Charles jerked his teacup away with a strangled yelp. He looked down; the tea had splattered all down the front of his white shirt and was soaking into his cardigan, still steaming. It burned, and he plucked the sodden fabric up off his skin before glancing quickly up again, certain he would find that the dragon had been the result of reading too long and sleeping too little.

Great green eyes met his. There was no doubt: pointed black pupils shrank to focus in on _him_ and Charles caught his breath, freezing in place. The forward placement of those eyes suggested a predatory lifestyle; the jaw lined with sharp teeth confirmed it. Charles held very still, tea on his chest cooling from burn to ache, while a quiet and frantic voice within insisted that it made no sense for a flying beast to have vision based around movement.

The dragon’s eyes widened, just a little. It blinked. Then it curved its head away, turning to the open sky. It drew back onto its hind legs, stood crouched on his neighbor’s balcony, and then leapt out into the air with a great heave, flapping its wings thunderously as it soared low over the building across the street and then gained altitude, growing ever smaller with distance.

Charles gaped until it vanished behind a tall building, and sat clutching the armchair for a few moments longer.

Then he jumped to his feet. The book fell to the carpet and the tea sloshed dangerously in the cup but he ignored both as he hurried to the glass door. He pulled it open further and slipped out through the gap, snagging a button on his cardigan along the way and almost ripping it off in his haste.

Charles caught himself on the railing and leaned against it, peering over the rooftops; then he looked down to the street, expecting to see upturned faces looking back at him. Those wings had been loud, and the shadow immense—but all he saw below were hats and hair and the slow navigation of cars along the narrow road.

No one else had seen the dragon but himself, and that meant…

He was going crazy. He’d been exposed to too many chemicals in the lab, had to deal with too many grad students, stayed up late too many nights in a row, too often—it would have happened eventually one way or the other. No one else had seen the dragon, and it had been _right there_.

Unless…

There might have been _one_ other person who’d seen it—who could have been just as close.

Charles rushed to his front door, catching his foot on a textbook as he went and stumbling the rest of the way. He undid the chain, unlatched the door, and tumbled out into the dim hallway, where he lurched sideways toward his neighbor’s door.

Holding his breath, he rapped over the peeling blue paint with his knuckles.

He waited.

Charles knocked again, louder, and the door rattled loosely in its frame.

He waited a little while longer, watching the strip of daylight beneath the door for the shadows of feet. Finally, biting his lip, he reached out and wiggled the knob back and forth.

Locked, of course.

Charles leaned his shoulder against his neighbor’s door and sagged down into it, hanging his head, suddenly exhausted. A faint ringing began in his ears. He saw the stiff brown tea stain that covered his white shirt and, below that, the innocent staring eyes of his teddy bear slippers. The mostly-empty teacup still clung to his fingers.

He looked like a crazy person, and he blushed to imagine what his neighbor would have thought. Charles knew what the man looked like, and from several different angles, even if they’d never traded names; they’d encountered each other rarely over the three years of Charles’ professorship, but he was certain he’d made a poor impression by staring slack-jawed every time. So it was a good thing, really, that no one answered—even if this meant that Charles _was_ a crazy person.

Dragging himself from the door, Charles shuffled down the hallway to where his own hung open. He shut it behind himself, and when he was satisfied that it was locked again he went back toward his armchair.

His knees felt weak and he wanted nothing more than to sit, but his book still lay on the floor, its pages scattered beneath it. With a sigh, Charles at last set down his teacup and knelt over the book. He swayed dangerously, and steadied himself with a hand on the arm of the chair as he hooked a finger in between the pages, parted where he’d stopped in his reading.

Charles pulled himself to his feet with the book closed around his finger, and stood straight for just an instant before the world began to tip. Scintillating darkness clouded his vision, and his sense of balance spun around his ears. Pain pinched his forehead.

As carefully as he could, he sank back down to his knees. Then to his hip, supported by his hand, and down to his elbow.

Once he lay fully on his side, Charles curled up with the book clutched to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to press the queasy static from them.

Unfortunately, he could see it just as well with his eyes closed.

 

4

 

His wings trembled where they stretched into the cool night air, aching with strain. It took all that Erik had to crest one last tall rooftop, and he nearly scraped against it with his belly.

From there he slipped gratefully into a glide. Home was a square of black on the side of a building, and he could see it now. It galvanized him, and he found the strength to flap his wings once more. The thought of rest beckoned him, though the morning was not far off.

Hurrying had its price: he dove down but his exhausted wings possessed neither the coordination nor the energy to break his descent.

Erik slammed into the balcony. The railing screeched in protest and the tiles shattered under his sudden weight, but the structure held, and he caught himself before he fell to the street below. The iron in the railing thrummed against his skin, but didn’t burn. Elsewhere, he heard the whispers of sleepy voices raised in panic, but he ignored them.

He nudged the glass door fully open with his nose and pulled himself up into the flat, tucking his wings against his sides. Even that relief hurt, but it was minor compared to his injuries.

Erik closed his eyes against the darkness and drew in a slow breath. His sides expanded, stretching a gash over his ribs. The bright pain of it bloomed behind his eyelids and he centered himself around it, drawing his will together into a tight ball, folding himself as he had folded his wings.

He opened human-shaped eyes and stood barefoot on carpet. In this shape he wore clothing, but he knew without needing to check that the gash in his side was no longer there.

No longer there, but not gone. It was a knot in his will, sharp and unpleasant as a bone in his throat, and he pulled his lips back in a snarl.

 _Sleep_. Rest would help him heal.

Erik turned in the direction of his bedroom and stopped, realizing two things in quick succession.

First, there was a human sprawled on the floor.

Second, this wasn’t his flat.

Stalking closer on noiselessly bare feet, Erik loomed over the human, his head titled and eyes sharp. He knew this man; knew him, vaguely, to be his neighbor. He knew, also, that this human had seen _him_ —not the shell he encased himself within but his _real_ self. They’d met each other’s eyes, and there could be no doubt.

If Erik had known that it was some changeling moving in next to him, he might have paid more attention. He might have convinced him to move away again, or tried to be more cautious in his comings and goings—more cautious even than one mistake in three years. As it was…

Well. He had already decided what to do when he’d flown away that afternoon.

Erik crouched down, lowering himself gently to one knee, and flexed his fingers, talons slipping out through his disguise, long and sharp and wickedly hooked. He drew back his arm, but not far, because flesh was fragile.

 

 

The human’s lashes fluttered against his cheeks, and with a sigh, he turned his head and looked up, meeting Erik’s gaze for the second time that day. He smiled and blinked rapidly, eyes unfocusing before sliding shut again. “Oh; it’s you,” he said, and then his smile pulled into a grimace.

Erik lowered his talons, just a little. Tipping his head to one side, he watched as the human shifted weakly on the carpet. A hand found Erik’s knee and curled loosely over it. The voice was quiet, but he spoke clearly—almost lucidly, for all that it was nonsense. “Are you here to carry me away?”

Frowning, Erik looked the human over again; talons receded into skin and he reached down to touch these new fingertips to that sweat-slick forehead. His skin was cool to the touch, not feverish at all, though he watched Erik with no apparent understanding that Erik had no place being there. More interestingly, he watched Erik as if he didn’t know what he was, or that he should be afraid.

Erik smoothed his hand absently over the human’s head and peered around. He’d never really taken an interest in his neighbor’s flat, but now that he was here he couldn’t help but feel pity. There was hardly anything in the place except for piles of books and a few lonely pieces of battered furniture.

When the human saw through his glamour, Erik had assumed that it was because he had power; he’d assumed that his neighbor was one of the Silence’s spies, either sent to him or stumbled upon him by accident. Now he knew the truth to be different—this was not a man to be feared, but he _could_ be.

The human leaned into Erik’s hand, guilelessly trusting. It would be easy to kill him. He would never tell anyone what he’d seen, and he would never turn into someone who _could_ be a threat. He was small and soft and Erik could end it quickly; almost painlessly, if he was careful. Human flesh was unappetizing, but he could get rid of the evidence if it meant that the Silence wouldn’t come knocking at his door.

Humans—changelings especially—had killed many of _his_ kind, after all, and they’d done it less mercifully.

Erik exhaled slowly, and then climbed to his feet. He was tired, and hurt. He wasn’t in the mood for killing.

He shuffled toward the door, head hanging to watch for books, but he didn’t get very far before the human made a soft noise of discomfort. Erik paused, and twisted very slightly at the waist to look back.

The human had curled up into a ball, holding himself and shivering.

Erik had lived for a long time, and knew what had happened. He wasn’t sparing this human’s life just to let him die slowly. In his own home, he was safe from anything that might kill him, present company excluded; there was absolutely no reason to be concerned. Except…

…Except that he’d left the balcony door open, and the human had kicked off one of his ridiculous slippers, and he looked cold and pathetic, lying there. _Weak_ , but… not offensively so.

Erik exhaled slowly through his nostrils and walked back to the balcony door. Shutting it, he raised an eyebrow at the damage he’d done outside. Then he turned, and went to stand over the human, where he hesitated. His brows leaned against each other and he frowned, echoing the unhappy curve of the human’s mouth. He considered leaving, now that he’d shut the door, but the wound in Erik’s will twisted rebellion.

He knelt.

The human’s body was light, and it was easy to gather him up into his arms. Harder to stand with him, injured as he was, but he lifted them both without stumbling. Erik looked down to see that the human had pressed his cheek against his chest, and that he continued to shiver, the flesh of his body not yet registering Erik’s warmth. He didn’t struggle, however, and for that Erik was grateful.

The layout of their flats appeared to be mirrored, so Erik found the bed quickly. Once laid on top of it, the human’s body trapped the sheets, so Erik took a spare quilt from the closet and spread it over him.

Then, generosity expended, Erik left. He had an early morning, after all, and little time to rest until then.


	2. Chapter 2

5

 

At some point during the night, Charles finally slipped into an unremarkable slumber, free of bruised colors and sinuous voices. He could have slept forever, but the alarm rang at seven and he peeled his eyes open, feeling stiff and empty.

Charles turned over in bed, wrapped himself up in the quilt, and squeezed his eyes shut one final time. Then with a huge sigh he sat up, blinking down at the stain on his shirt.

He didn’t remember going to bed.

Or, well—he _did_ , but then again, he remembered many things from the night before.

Strangely, he was still wearing one teddy bear slipper. He kicked it off before lowering his feet down to the floor and then tottered into the kitchen, wearing the quilt like a cape around his shoulders.

There was still tea in the pot, but Charles drained it and set a fresh kettle to boil. He leaned against the counter until the kettle spluttered and screeched, and then he poured the water into the pot with new tea. Upon finding a few scraps of bread lying in the breadbox, he toasted them.

He took his cup and plate back to the armchair and fell into it, then looked out the window, staring with blank incomprehension.

His balcony had been _destroyed_. The railing lay crumpled flat just outside his doors, and below it the tiles had all jumped up and shattered, as if some great weight had slammed into it.

Charles took a bite from his toast and chewed thoughtfully. He had a vague recollection, somewhere amidst the haze of the night before, of some commotion. It was a shame he’d been curled up on the floor and hallucinating, or he might have known whom to bill. As it was… well. It was just a balcony. There was no point in getting upset, really.

Given that he’d spent such a substantial portion of the last twenty-four hours delirious with some unknown illness, it was probably, almost certainly unwise to go back to the lab. His colleagues, however, were still scornful of his age, and if he wasn’t around then McCoy might make some breakthrough discovery without him. Anyway, it wasn’t such a long walk, and his instinct was that whatever had been in his system had since run its course.

So Charles finished his toast, showered until his eyes stopped feeling like they were full of sand, and—without once looking back at his ruined balcony—pulled on his blazer. Right before he left, Charles bundled into his coat, just to be careful.

He tried to ignore the fact that he had very definitely _locked_ his door the day before.

 

6 

 

It started out well enough but went quickly downhill from there.

The street outside was pure October bluster, and the chill finally jolted Charles into wakefulness. He stood for a moment on his building’s stairs, hands thrust deep into his pockets, relishing the snap of the wind against his skin while he breathed as if he’d never tasted air. It was a new day, and he quickly decided that it would be a _better_ day.

So he stepped off onto the pavement with a spring in his step, his face turned up so that he could feel the wind as it flung back his hair, glad to be free of the tumultuous dark of the night before. He reached the corner and turned, continuing on.

Charles paused at the next corner, slipping a hand from his pocket to press his fingers against an eyebrow, a frown of discomfort on his face as he swayed on his feet. The wind seemed very loud in his ears, and he could hear—he could hear _something_ , like voices muttering in another room.

His nose creased up and he ground his fingertips into his forehead. _Go away, go away,_ he told them, because he would really rather _not_ be hearing voices. And incredibly, miraculously… they did.

Charles let his hand fall back to his side, and then as an afterthought he tucked it back into his pocket. He began again to walk through the shade of brick buildings, and he dismissed the rustling in his ears as the rattle of yellowed leaves overhead.

He pulled his shoulders in tight and shivered. He pressed on, the heels of his sleek Oxford dress shoes clicking on stone, until he came to the little park he liked to cut through on his way to the lab. Hardly bothering to check for traffic, he ducked across the street and walked into the deeper shade of tamed trees.

It was quiet there, the noise of Tottenham Court Road far more distant than its reality, and Charles slowed. Even the wind seemed gentler, slowed by the trees perhaps, and it was very slightly warmer. He drew a deep, steadying breath, and stepped out from the park into the relative bustle of the road beyond.

Charles stopped. He gasped, lungs frozen helplessly between his ribs. All around him men and women hurried along to their destinations, bundled up in wool and sheltering behind hats tipped into the wind, not speaking but _loud_ —a literally unspeakable cacophony rushing through him, almost sweeping him away—not just words but emotion, fleeting impressions of _hurry_ and _annoyance_ and _joy_ that came and went senselessly away again—

Charles stumbled back and bumped into the park railing, which he grabbed at without looking, the unyielding black edges of it biting into his hands as his grip twisted tight. He stared, dizzy, still not breathing, and could not imagine crossing that road, huge and full of boxy little cars and people and so much whirling _noise_ that it was only when his vision began to spark and fade that Charles remembered that he needed oxygen.

He closed his eyes and focused inward, on his ribs. He told their muscles to pull, and his lungs expanded with them. Relaxed, and exhaled. He repeated this until he no longer felt quite as dizzy, enough to where he could push himself up off the railing and feel back along it, back into the park, where the voices faded. Not gone, but… less immediate, like crawling out of river rapids to sit in a shallow pool. He could hear the roar of it but no longer felt in danger of drowning.

Charles made his way over to a concrete bench and collapsed onto it, panting gratefully. He ducked his head down behind his hands and ruffled up his hair just to smooth it down again, then tilted his head back, recalling that the human trachea was straightest there. The concrete was cold and real beneath him.

Then he heard a noise—or maybe _not_ a noise, maybe something else—and a chill of suspicion teased his skin. He opened his eyes and turned his head to look.

There was a young girl sitting on the bench with him.

Charles blinked. No, she was a _woman_. Her open curiosity and unapologetic stare only made her seem young.

When he met her stare, however, she froze. Gossamer wings at her shoulders twitched back as if she might take flight the moment he moved, so Charles didn’t, and after a tense moment the wings relaxed and so did the woman. Her lips, shiny with gloss, stretched into a grin.

“You’ve never seen me before,” she told him, sounding cautiously elated.

Charles tore his eyes away from her wings to look at her face, and then at the rest of her. She wore a black leather jacket, tall boots, a short skirt, and her hair was chopped unevenly around her face. He wondered vaguely whether she was a rocker, or perhaps—given the wings—a freak, but she seemed nice enough.

“I haven’t,” he agreed, and scooted back down the bench to make more room between them. “I’m sorry, did I disturb you?”

She laughed, her eyes stuck on him as if he were the most interesting thing she’d seen in a long time. “No, no, don’t sweat it. I don’t mind. I thought—for a moment I thought maybe you were a muffler, and, well, I haven’t done anything _wrong_ of course, but I’m glad you’re not!”

Charles smiled, sensing that he was expected to, but his eyebrows pinched together helplessly. “Oh. Ah… Thank you, I suppose.” He scrambled for something to say but needn’t have bothered, because she didn’t let the silence linger.

“I’m Angel,” she said, crossing her ankles and offering a slim hand.

He shook it. Long fingernails glittered black and silver against his paler skin. “Really? You don’t look like an angel. I mean—not to imply…”

Angel giggled back at him, squeezing his fingers before letting go. “Of course not! That’s just what I call myself. Because I live next to this church, see?”

Charles looked doubtfully over at the unimpressive brick church that made one wall of the little park. “…That makes perfect sense.”

She leaned forward, narrowing her eyes secretively. “Between you and me, daddy-o, I’m nothing _like_ angelic.” The wings fluttered. Over her leaning shoulder Charles saw that they were attached seamlessly to her skin through holes in the leather jacket.

“Our secret,” Charles said, and pushed himself quickly to his feet. “I’m afraid I should go. It was nice meeting you, Angel. I’m Charles—Charles Xavier. I’ll look out for you when I come back this way.”

Angel didn’t get up, but crossed her wrists over her knees. “Later, Charles. Don’t be a stranger!”

He waved, and then walked away from Tottenham Court Road and its river of voices, back to his flat.

 

7

 

Charles might have been too preoccupied to buy furniture, but it was easy enough to pay someone to set up a private telephone line and he had done so almost as soon as he moved in. There were no voices whispering in his ear _there_ when he called in sick to the department.

He made another pot of tea and poured himself a cup, then took it and a textbook to bed for some enforced rest, changing into his most comfortable old cardigan for good measure. After draining his cup he forgot to get a new one, but for once not because he’d been engrossed in a book—there were no voices over the phone line, but they still muttered fitfully in his mind. They persisted no matter whether he covered his ears or ignored them.

After some few stubborn hours of shifting around on his bed in cycles as first one limb and then another fell asleep, Charles shut the book and climbed off the mattress. He went to his balcony, slid the door open, and stepped cautiously out onto it in his socks, testing his weight over the shattered tiles before deciding that it seemed solid enough, though cold.

He leaned his elbows on a part of the railing that _wasn’t_ flattened and looked out at the hills of rooftops, head tilted, listening to hear what his madness had to say for itself.

_…Cheryl called; she said we’re not meeting for lunch later…Do people really listen to this music? Kids these days…Like they don’t understand that plumbing isn’t magic, that I can’t just wave my wrench and…_

_…Can’t be hearing something I would hear it too…_

Charles shivered, hair prickling on his arms, and he twisted to look over his shoulder.

His neighbor watched from behind the glass, not quite hidden by reflections of buildings and gray sky. Their eyes met, and the other man made no attempt to pretend that he hadn’t been staring.

He opened his door and joined Charles over on his own balcony, glancing briefly out at the rooftops before settling his gaze back on Charles, sharp and thoughtful. He was as tall and handsome as Charles remembered him to be, lean as a whippet and dressed in dark trousers and a casually blue turtleneck. It suited him.

He seemed altogether unworried as he asked, “Are you feeling well?”

“I’m all right,” Charles said, and leaned back from the railing. “You were watching me.”

One line of an eyebrow crept very deliberately up his neighbor’s forehead, and then lowered. “You’re never home during the day.”

Which was true—even for weekends, though it was Thursday—but Charles found his cheeks warming in the chill October air. “…I am a bit under the weather, yes.”

“I see,” his neighbor said, and then stood with his thumbs hooked through his belt, watching Charles with his head inclined. His reddish hair feathered in the wind but he was otherwise motionless.

Charles glanced down at the broken tiles, then back up to check if his neighbor was still weighing him with his eyes. He was, so Charles looked instead down at the building across the street. He scratched at his ear. “Say, I don’t suppose you know what happened to my balcony, do you?”

Taking one thumb out from under his belt, his neighbor leaned his hand on the railing between them to survey the damage with little interest. “I’m afraid I don’t, no.”

Charles felt his forehead crease up in irritation, and his neighbor looked up again in time to see.

“I’m sorry,” he said, straightening again. “I must seem terribly rude. I’m Erik Lehnsherr.”

Charles glanced doubtfully at the offered hand, taking note of those long, elegant fingers—and really wasn’t there _anything_ about this man that wasn’t elegant and refined?

Well, his manners, apparently.

Charles took Erik’s hand, still warm from being inside, and shook it firmly to make up for his lesser height. “Professor Charles Xavier.”

The edges of Erik’s mouth curled into a conspiratorial sort of smile as he let Charles’ fingers slip out from between his own. "I’m afraid I was otherwise occupied when you moved in, Professor Xavier, or I would have introduced myself sooner.”

Charles hesitated, struggling between politeness and lingering irritation. Erik’s eyebrows tipped up hopefully as he continued to smile, more than a little unnerving in combination with the watchfulness of his gaze, but… Charles sighed, admitting defeat. “I suppose I should offer you a drink, then? Or…” He frowned at his watch; it wasn’t yet noon. “Or perhaps tea, if you like.”

Erik drew breath to speak, but Charles interrupted. “Oh! No, what am I thinking, I can’t have guests. My place…” He gestured vaguely back into his flat to indicate just how awful it was, hoping that his relief wasn’t too evident and avoiding Erik’s stare to be sure. “I couldn’t possibly subject you to that.”

“I could mix martinis,” Erik suggested, and Charles looked back at him in time to see those green eyes wide just for an instant before Erik blinked, as if surprised by his own suggestion. He smiled again, not quite smoothly enough to cover his hesitation. “If it’s not too early, of course.”

“Honestly, it’s never too early,” Charles said. “Ah… _Now_?”

Erik stepped back from the railing and beckoned for Charles to follow.

Charles looked after him helplessly. Did he expect Charles to climb over the railings, or…? Granted, there was only about a foot of space between their balconies, but… And Charles wasn’t wearing _shoes_.

Then again, neither was Erik. Charles noticed now that, below the cuffs of his trousers, his feet were perfectly bare.

Charles looked back into his apartment again and wanted to go inside, out through the front door. And… maybe not even that far. Perhaps he could arrange some sort of catastrophe along the way.

But no—this was his neighbor, after all: his tall, handsome, whippet-thin and very disconcerting neighbor. He was obligated.

Charles sighed, and took hold of the railing as he lifted his leg up over it.

At least there would be alcohol.

 

8 

 

The human— _Xavier_ —followed Erik into his flat and lingered awkwardly just inside the door. Erik was tempted to leave him there, but then again he _had_ invited him and at the very least it would be inconvenient to serve martinis from all the way across the room.

So Erik turned, unable to prevent his eyes from darting over Xavier’s shabby cardigan and creased trousers as he said, “Have a seat.” He said this calmly, as if he weren’t ready to spring across the room if his furniture seemed to be in danger. After all, Erik had seen his neighbor’s flat.

He tensed as Xavier extended his hand toward the black leather of an armchair Erik had tracked down through a series of dealers at the Portobello Road Market over the course of several weeks—but his touch was gentle, and Erik relaxed, just a little.

“This is nice,” Xavier said, sounding surprised. “You know, I lost most of my furniture when I moved here. I might have to ask you where I can go to replace them, once I have some time to spare.”

Erik paused, wary again. “None of these came from stores.”

Xavier didn’t bother to look up, but smiled fondly at the armchair. “Oh, I’m sure. Still. I would like to know whom to contact.”

Erik nodded, and turned quickly away toward his cabinets. The few other guests he’d entertained had all either tossed themselves onto his chairs obliviously, or worse, had gone out of their way to make it clear how quaint they found his small hoard. It was… _gratifying_ , to have this human’s appreciation, if no one else’s.

Collecting together his mixing glasses, spoons, gin and vermouth, Erik reminded himself that he had not invited Xavier into his flat merely for flattery, or even to get to know him. He had _purpose_.

He didn’t measure out the spirits but poured them by memory, more gin than vermouth but a healthy amount of each. He transferred this into a second tall glass, with ice now, and stirred it all with a long-handled spoon, frowning contemplatively. Meanwhile, Xavier had settled into the armchair, legs crossed and with every appearance of being very comfortable there as he peered around the room.

Erik drove back his satisfaction— _see? no need to sacrifice comfort for elegance_ —and instead tried to focus on strategy. It was clear that Xavier’s latent abilities had been forced active by exposure to a large quantity of magic—Erik refused to feel guilt over that—and from his observation he had a good idea of what those abilities were. It had been with more than a little curiosity that Erik projected thoughts of itchy ears, and to his fascination Xavier had actually lifted his hand to scratch.

Which was hardly definitive, but the possible benefit of having an unaffiliated telepath under his wing could not be ignored.

Turning around, Erik opened the refrigerator and retrieved two cold martini glasses and half a lemon. How to tell him, though? Xavier looked a little paler than natural, true, and his eyes were haunted with well-disguised worry, but he did not look like a man whose entire life had just been turned around by the existence of magic, and Erik wasn’t very good at subtlety.

He pursed his lips as he strained the cocktail back out through the ice, dividing it evenly between both glasses. He shaved two twists of peel off the lemon and caressed each along the rim of a glass before letting it sink. At that, he held two martinis in his hands and still no answers.

Well. Ambush him with the truth it was, then—but he would let Xavier finish the martini first.

“Thank you,” Xavier said, taking his glass. He sipped, made a noise of pleasure, and sipped again. “Good on you—you didn’t skip the vermouth!”

Erik inclined his head in acknowledgement, and eased down into a chair of his own, opposite. “It wouldn’t be a martini if I did.”

“I appreciate that. If I wanted gin I’d drink from the bottle.”

To this Erik had no response. His eyes settled on Xavier’s watch—its face was blue and the bracelet was only steel, but despite the scuffs on the bezel the glass was smooth and perfect. Not glass, then, but mineral crystal. He peered closer, and with his better-than-human eyesight saw the crown at twelve o’ clock.

He considered the possibility that it had been a gift, or perhaps a hard-earned status symbol, and then dismissed the idea. Xavier did not wear a steel Rolex because he had to, but because it was practical, and—perhaps—because it matched his eyes. Erik looked over the rumpled trousers and worn cardigan again, seeing now that they, too, were of better quality that he’d originally thought, and were simply well-worn with comfort.

 

 

 

“How long have you lived here, then, Mr. Lehnsherr?”

Erik’s eyes darted back up to meet Xavier’s. “Five years.”

Xavier waited for Erik to elaborate, then arched one remarkably flexible eyebrow and moved onto his next question. “So, what do you do for a living?”

Erik hesitated. He worked two jobs, one in his human disguise and one out of it, but he supposed that the distinction was immaterial at this point. “Security. And you?”

“I’m a professor of genetics,” Xavier said, smiling now. He shifted, drawing one leg up underneath himself. “I run a lab at UCL. I started about three years ago, and ever since then I’ve been comparing serums collected from the tissues of various great apes to those of humans. It’s my goal to determine when humans diverged from the rest of the family.”

His enthusiasm was clear, and Erik supposed that it should be, if he were going to dedicate that much of his mortal life to any one subject. He smirked through the following explanations, enjoying the flicker of Xavier’s hands as he used them to illustrate concepts no human hand was meant to illustrate, and watching the curl of his red lips as he forced them into peculiar emphasis for the points he cared about, his slight body seeming almost to rock back with the force of his passion.

Erik, for his part, cared little for the history of humanity beyond its intersection with his own, which was really enough human history for _anyone_ to grow tired of the subject.

He waited until Xavier fell silent again, fidgeting with the twist of lemon in his empty martini glass, watching Erik in turn. The human’s tongue darted out to moisten his lips, and he smiled hesitantly; almost shyly.

Erik crossed his legs neatly at the knee, set his glass down on a nearby table, and then folded his fingers. “If you don’t mind me saying, Professor, you seem like the sort of person who would have to be quite a bit more than a little under the weather to be kept from such an important job.”

Xavier hunched up into himself, curling tighter in the corner of Erik’s armchair. “My illness, it’s— _worse_ , outside.”

“Around people?”

The look Xavier gave him was unexpectedly, furtively sharp— _human_ , Erik had to remind himself, did not also mean _stupid_. “…Yes. The stimulation of my senses, perhaps, from being around a lot of people—my brain seems unable to tolerate the additional sensory input at the moment. I expect I simply need to rest and recuperate.”

Erik nodded. It was a tidy bit of rationalization, but Xavier was a scientist and presumably trained to do so. If he’d been a less skeptical person Erik could have guided him gently toward the idea that his psychosis was in fact something real, but he would have to be blunt; perhaps shock might work where persuasion wouldn’t. “This over-stimulation of your senses—what does it express itself as?”

Xavier’s lips stretched back over his teeth and he unfolded his leg from beneath himself, setting his foot back down onto the carpet. “I don’t know that I should be discussing this with you,” he said, avoiding Erik’s gaze.

“Voices?” Erik guessed, and Xavier froze, blue eyes flicking up to meet his. “Transient emotions that come unprovoked and leave just as quickly? Memories of things that never happened to you?”

A crease appeared between Xavier’s eyebrows, and his mouth parted. He stared at Erik, then drew a sudden breath and began to push himself up out of the armchair. “You know, I really can’t—”

“ _Xavier_.” There was enough command in the word that the human froze again, if only out of surprise. Erik spoke while he could. “You’re an intelligent man—a scientist. Indulge me with an experiment.”

Still poised at the edge of his seat, Xavier’s nervous grin broadened as he shook his head. “No, no, I’m quite sure I don’t need to spend any more time listening to someone tell me that what I’m hearing is real.”

In his own chair, Erik made a great show of being relaxed. He did not want Xavier to interpret him as a threat by appearing too engaged, though every fiber of his being was at that moment focused on the human. “I was right, wasn’t I? About your symptoms.”

Xavier’s brow furrowed again. “…You were, yes. But they’re just that: _symptoms_. I’m sick, Mr. Lehnsherr, not—not _psychic_.”

“Telepathic,” Erik corrected. Briefly— _very_ briefly—he considered revealing his true form, but decided against it. If Xavier thought he was delusional now, he would _definitely_ think so after that. He exhaled slowly through his nose and studied Xavier’s stiff, coiled posture; no doubt he was ready to spring for the door.

 _Calm_ , he directed at the human, just in case he could pick it up.

Amazingly, Xavier seemed to settle a little, pliancy easing back into the muscles of his arms. His fingers no longer dented the leather.

“Thoughts are electrical impulses, aren’t they?” Erik asked, keeping his voice low and gentle. “A powerful enough instrument could detect them, and translate them.”

Xavier frowned, but no longer looked like he might bolt at any moment. “Human thoughts are remarkably complex, and there’s no evidence of anything in our biology that might be able to receive any such signal.”

Erik inclined his head in deference to the point. “But you do acknowledge that, from a technical standpoint at least, it’s possible?”

“Well, yes, but… Not for _me_. I’m just—I’m not in my right mind, is all. The voices will stop soon.” Xavier’s eyes were wide and staring, begging for Erik to agree.

“They won’t,” Erik said, holding those eyes with his own. “The best you can do is to manage them.”

Xavier scoffed. “Are you going to suggest I wear a tin hat?”

Erik smiled thinly. “Tin wouldn’t help. You need to refine your control.”

“My…?” Xavier chuckled, disbelieving. “And I suppose you’re the one to teach it to me? How much will it cost me to harness my inner potential, hmm?”

“I can’t teach you. I can only offer advice,” Erik said, ignoring the implied insult.

Xavier’s indulgent smile faded. “What advice?”

 “Any that I’m capable of giving. I rarely offer my hospitality, Professor Xavier—but you have it when you need it.”

Xavier narrowed his eyes, his perfect posture at odds with Erik’s easy lounge. “‘When’?”

“If you plan on ever leaving your flat again, then I expect so, yes.” Erik pinned Xavier with a stare, reinforcing his thoughts with assurances of his seriousness. “Your life has changed in more ways than you know, but you’ll discover that for yourself soon enough.”

“You seem remarkably sure about that.”

“I am. I’m not inclined toward frivolity at the best of times, and today is not a cheerful day for me either.”

Xavier grunted and looked away, folding his hands in his lap once more, perfect posture falling into a slouch. He seemed suddenly smaller. “I don’t know whether to thank you for your concern or to leave as quickly as possible and never speak to you again.”

Erik shrugged with feigned indifference. “I didn’t expect you to believe me without evidence.”

Nodding, Xavier tugged his lower lip between his teeth as he stared out through the balcony doors. The pale line of his neck curved in sharp contrast to the black of the chair, and Erik admired the shape he made against it. He thought vaguely of ivory, of jewels and gold—those things he scorned, as a dragon of modern tastes. It was a shame; Xavier would have complimented them well. Not that Erik would give such items away, of course—but he didn’t mind having his neighbor in the midst of his riches.

Hopefully, soon, his telepath.

… _His._

Erik blinked, and fought down a wave of purely draconic _greed_. It was the twentieth century, after all, and abducting human slaves to decorate the lair simply wasn’t _done_ anymore.

Besides. He didn’t like humans—he only needed them, and this one for a very specific purpose.

Xavier seemed oblivious in his brooding, so Erik fixed his attention on that round human ear and honed his thoughts into a dart of meaning. _Xavier!_ This brought no reaction, so Erik tried to be louder. _XAVIER. LISTEN: DON’T BE—_

“ _God_ ,” Xavier gasped, and grabbed at his head. Erik felt him, then—a whirlwind storm of _fear/pain/GO AWAY_ —and it was like being _slammed_ back into his chair, crushed beneath a suffocating weight, ears ringing, straining to breathe, hardly able to _think_.

Xavier stood poised over him, staring down with wild eyes, the blue of his irises an unbroken circle in white. Then he twitched, making an abortive move toward the balcony before halting again and dashing back the other way, toward the front door.

Erik heard the clatter of a lock opened by urgently clumsy hands, and a moment later the door slammed closed again. He let his eyes slide shut and inhaled slowly, gingerly. He did not appear to be injured, outside or within.

When he was sure that he could, Erik climbed to his feet and collected the martini glasses. He took them to the kitchen, disposed of the lemon twists, and set the glasses upside down in the dishwasher.

He did not pursue Xavier.

Xavier, he knew, would come to _him_.


	3. Chapter 3

9

 

The next day found Charles in the park again, staring out at the road beyond. Repeated experimentation had determined that the noise wasn’t bad, just so long as he stayed behind the metal grid of the fence.

He leaned on it with no more than his fingertips, as close as he could bear to get, and watched the traffic beyond with an expression that might have been a smile had it not been so much like a grimace. Just minutes before he’d tried again, and had only stepped out onto the pavement before the tide rose around him, as if he’d gone to wet his toes in the ocean waves only to be lifted off his feet and dragged hungrily out to deeper water.

Charles didn’t know what would happen after those waters stole him away. Did his delusion respond to his surroundings, or was the delusion itself a manifestation of his brain’s neurochemistry? If he drifted out to sea, would his body be left dumb or would he wake from it, like a dream?

_Thoughts are electrical impulses, aren’t they?_

He shook his head sharply, refusing to indulge that man by using his words. It was true that the things Charles heard and felt seemed to correlate with the people around him, yes, but there was no direct evidence that those were really their _thoughts_. It was just as likely that his own brain went merrily to work manufacturing whatever it pleased when Charles looked at a person.

Certainly that explained all the people who looked irritated and—according to the tide— _were_. It explained the young students who cursed the earliness of morning, the boredom of the bus drivers, and the gruff-looking man who was _still_ dwelling on how bad of a hostess his wife was, and how dry her meatloaf had been.

But there were surprises, too. Charles watched a young woman walk by the park staring fixedly ahead, and felt the tangled logic of mathematics in her head, used not for her schoolwork but in a rather complex calculation of finances, all toward the purchase of a record player. The location of this device burned in his mind, some streets down and over, then faded as she continued on, leaving only the fond memory of its lacquered case beneath her fingertips.

Many of those people who scowled at the pavement were so marvelously _bright_ inside that it was painful to think their virtues might be a fabrication of his mind.

He recalled the day before, with that troublesome Mr. Lehnsherr—his attractive-but-insane neighbor, _Erik_. Charles had been content, mostly, because despite Erik’s disquieting beliefs, there had been something like quiet again in Charles’ mind; a furtive sort of silence he didn’t dare inspect too closely in case it proved false.

Then that _shout_ —loud as a vicious slap in a silent room and if it had Erik’s voice then it was just the sort of thing the madness might use to torment him. He would have ignored it except that it had also been _pain_ , deep and real in a way words were not, like a wound deep within his body made all the more terrible because he could not even press his hands to it. __

It had been… _alarming_ , to say the least; nagging for his attention like a thorn in his beating heart, and Charles had fled from it. If Erik now thought that he was insane… Well, that had been Charles’ argument all along, hadn’t it?

Or perhaps he would seize onto it as further proof of Charles’ telepathy.

 _Telepathy_ was such a delightful-sounding word—light and airy as it played off the tongue. It sounded nicer than the alternatives.

Charles smiled ruefully to himself and pushed away from the fence.

“Not today, then?” Angel asked, leaning against the coal-darkened trunk of a tree, her arms crossed. A day’s absence had done nothing to make the wings on her back any less visible or attached.

 

 

“I’m afraid not,” Charles said. His feet took him near to where she stood, and they looked out into the street together.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” She wasn’t smiling.

“Hmm? I suppose so, yes. I don’t usually stand back and watch like this.”

Angel tipped her head to one side. “They’re all so clueless of the world around them, and of the history beneath their feet. You know, it wasn’t that long ago that this placed burned—less since they were hiding underground with the trolls—but you wouldn’t think it to look at them.”

Charles turned to look at her, his eyebrows in shocked crescents. “That’s a bit unfair, isn’t it? They know—” He stopped, because _no_ , he _didn’t_ know what they knew. “I’m sure they know more than you give them credit for. It’s… _subtle_. It’s just not something people talk about.”

A rotund man taking a shortcut through the park glanced sidelong at them as he passed, and he pushed his bowler’s cap down firmly on his head, hiding his face with his sleeve. Charles frowned at his back.

“He thinks you’re crazy,” Angel told him, sounding very smug about the prognosis. “He can’t see me so he thinks you’re talking to yourself.”

Charles’ frown deepened. “Well, aren’t I?”

Angel gave him a look of exasperated disappointment. “ _No_. God, you’re green. He can’t see me because I’m under a glamour.”

Charles furrowed his brow, searching under years of scientific terminology for the meaning. _Glamorous­_ —beautiful, luxurious, enchanting… _Enchanting_. “A spell?”

She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t stop her lips from twitching up at the corner. “There may be hope for you yet, Charles. Yes, I’m under a spell, so nobody without the Sight can see me.”

Nodding, Charles looked back toward the road. Well, _this_ certainly added a new layer to everything—first telepathy to explain the voices, and now glamour to explain the wings. Beside him, he could feel the sense of Angel: buzzing, flitting excitement, but only gossamer over the deeper stillness of true resentment, unexpected but unsurprising—after all, she dressed like a rebel. But rebelling against what, he wondered? Resentment toward whom?

“I thought—the way you reacted when we met—I thought you must have a mentor already,” Angel said, looking at him now, dark eyes concerned. He did not see resentment there; not toward _him_. “You need someone to tell you what’s up and down in this world, or bad things will happen to you.”

Charles stared back warily. “Like what?”

The wings on her back fluttered in agitation, and she crossed her arms more tightly. “When you’re in on the secret, it’s easy to tell when other people are too. Eventually the mufflers’ll come knocking, and they’re okay if you’re human, but in the meantime there are a lot of things in this city that would see you as an easy chance to get their teeth into human flesh without breaking the silence.”

“What silence?” Charles asked, his attention drifting back to the people, cars, and buses passing by. Certainly it wasn’t out _there_.

“ _Our_ silence—our secrecy. It’s against the law to reveal ourselves to humans, but if you already know… Well, you’re fair game.”

 

10

 

Charles called into work again, hung up, and hesitated with the tip of his finger still in the dial. Then, with a defeated sigh, he spun the wheel and lifted the phone to his ear. One conversation and two hours later, there was a knock at his door.

He’d barely opened it before Raven bustled in, her arms loaded down with brown paper bags. “Seriously, Charles, you either need to buy more food or get some friends in the area, because this is the last time I skip out on work to rush across town and do your shopping for you.”

Charles said nothing in return as she set the bags down on the counter, and then caught one before it could topple. “Also, you owe me, and don’t try to tell me that I ‘needn’t buy so much’ because I know how you work and if you run out of food again, remember that I said this is the last time, _no arguments_.”

Raven took several apples and a carton of chili peppers out of the top-heavy bag, unloading them onto the counter until it was no longer in danger of tipping over, then turned to him, hands on hips. “…And speaking of, you are being _awfully_ quiet over there.”

“You’re blue,” Charles said, squinting. Or rather, she was blue beneath the thin halo of normality stretched over her skin. The overall effect was disorientating.

She lifted her hand to cover her mouth and gaped at him. “Charles?”

He waved dismissively. “No, it’s nothing, I’ve been seeing things for a while now.”

The translucent shell of his blonde, pale-skinned sister vanished in an instant, leaving only dark blue scales and sleek red hair. Her yellow eyes burned like coals, and she was nude except for a pair of black gloves, but he found this strangely easier to look at than when she’d been both human and not.

“For how long?” this blue version of Raven asked.

Charles concentrated. “Two days now? Yes. That’s why I can’t go out by other people, you see. Too overwhelming.”

Raven nodded. “You’re pretty calm, considering.”

“Well, I assume I’ve gone mad, but I disagree with modern therapy techniques so there’s not much I can do about it.”

“You’re not insane, Charles,” Raven said, walking toward him slowly, as if afraid he might change his mind and run at any moment.

“I’m not?” Charles asked. He wanted to be objective, but… But this was Raven, his _sister_ , and there were groceries on the counter and the door was still hanging open where he’d left it and she stank of the river she waitressed by.

Raven reached for him, and he held his arms out so that she could slide hers underneath. The scales on her back were rough against his palms and the world clicked back into focus as she said, “No. This is real. It’s always been real. You just never saw before.”

 

11 

 

Charles made tea for them both and offered his armchair to Raven, but she insisted that he sit, adding, “What’s wrong with you, anyway? Isn’t there some big furniture store over on Tottenham Court Road?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t had time recently.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s only a ten minute walk.”

“I’m sick, in case you didn’t… Well, no; I’m…” Charles tilted his head. What had Erik said? _Telepath_. He rolled the word around in his mouth to get the feel of it, adjusting the definition with a tentative annotation of _self_. “I’m a telepath. I don’t do well in crowds. …Apparently.”

This mollified Raven where any other excuse would have brought derision. She grunted. “You could order, or pay someone to decorate your flat.”

Charles cringed. “I’d rather choose my furniture in person, if it’s all the same.”

Raven raised a scaly eyebrow. “You never gave a second thought about any of your furniture before.”

“I’ve never bought any before,” he said. “It’s always been someone else’s, passed down to me or included with the rent.”

“Oh, this is one of those self-discovery things. Gotcha.” Raven leaned against the wall by the balcony door, glanced out through it, and then looked again. “ _Holy—_ what happened to your _balcony_?”

 “I don’t know,” Charles said, feeling his cheeks grow hot. “It was like that when I woke up.”

Raven opened her mouth to insist, looked at him, and let it drop. “Anyway, all life-changing difficulty aside, I’m glad you’re a changeling now; keeping myself secret was getting old.” At Charles’ puzzled stare, she explained, “We call people like you changelings. It’s from back when humans thought that weird kids were fae in disguise.”

“I see,” Charles said, sipping at his tea. He studied his sister, and she let him, standing still under his scrutiny. Her appearance was absolutely alien, but… not wholly unfamiliar. “Forgive me if I’m wrong, but aren’t _you_ a changeling? In the more traditional sense.”

She smiled, showing white teeth against dark blue skin. “In the traditional sense, yes. You found me, remember? By the pond, when we were kids.”

Charles thought back. How old had he been when Raven interrupted his loneliness? Around eleven, he decided. When… “I almost drowned.”

Her lips slipped back down over her teeth, and her eyes—so strange, still so human—creased fondly. “I saved you.”

Had she? Charles frowned; it was a difficult time to remember. It had been after his stepfather found out about one of his school crushes, before Charles had any idea how much people cared about things like gender. He’d escaped his room and crossed the grounds with a quilt tied around some books, but it had been so dark that night, and he’d rarely been allowed to explore outside on his own in case he fell sick with fever, so he discovered the pond rather suddenly.

He remembered that, but not much of what came after. He didn’t learn to swim until after that incident, and it had been disorientating in the black water and muck, the weeds pulled tight around his waist and dragging him down. Or… could they have been arms?

His parents had been surprisingly forgiving, and he hadn’t tried to run away again with Raven around to distract him.

“I always wondered how it was that Mother and Father accepted you into the family,” Charles said. “It seemed strangely generous, for them. Was that part of the… glamour?”

A faint crease of perplexity appeared on Raven’s forehead. “No; I can only disguise myself as other people. I’ve wondered about that too, actually. I thought you’d spoken to them.”

Charles tipped his chin down and raised his eyebrows. “ _Me_?”

She grimaced. “Point taken. Who have you been talking to, by the way?”

“Oh, well. There’s a girl with dragonfly wings in the park around the corner from here. A fairy, maybe?” He pulled his face into a question, feeling slightly less ridiculous when Raven didn’t dismiss the idea, but she only shrugged. “I’ve spoken to her, though not at length. Oh, and… my neighbor as well, I suppose.”

She hadn’t even blinked at “fairy”, but now Raven’s eyes widened in surprise. “Your _neighbor_? I’m not sure what to be more shocked by: that your neighbor’s one of us, or that you actually spoke to another human being!”

Before Charles could get offended, her hand shot up between them. “Wait. _Is_ your neighbor human?”

Charles shut his mouth with a click of teeth, and thought. “As far as I know, yes. If your glamour is any indication then I can see through them, and he wasn’t using one.”

Raven’s mouth twisted doubtfully. “Not everything needs a glamour. There are plenty of creatures that can physically change their bodies, or start out looking pretty much human, and a lot of them are bad news.”

“Mm. He seemed very concerned. Intense, too. He never took his eyes off of me, just _staring_ , like he wanted to…”

“ _Okay_ , I get it: he’s a hunk,” Raven said, rolling her eyes.

Charles glared at her over the rim of his teacup. “What I’m trying to say is, he offered to help me with my telepathy.”

“Well that _definitely_ means he’s a good guy,” Raven said, showing her teeth in a too-happy smile that she immediately dropped. “Charles, you know that telepathy isn’t exactly common, right, and that there are plenty of people who’d want a piece of you for it?”

“Oh,” he said, and blinked widely at her. “No I… I honestly thought everyone who had the Sight read minds too.”

She struggled not to laugh, without much success. “Clearly I need to draw you a diagram. The Sight is something that _every_ creature with any tiny amount of magic has. Humans who have it are rare, and any being with abilities like yours are doubly rare. Hate to break it to you, but you’re a unicorn. …Figuratively speaking, of course. I can’t stand unicorns.”

“Why not?”

Raven shrugged. “They think they’re better than everyone else. They won’t even give you the time of day if you’re not a virgin.”

“I see,” Charles said, and then gaped at Raven in slow horror. “Oh. _Oh_. I _really_ didn’t need to know that.”

“There, now you know what it felt like being your little sister all these years,” Raven said, eyes narrowed. She pushed herself away from the wall and waved her teacup at him. “Speaking of! As your sister, it would be irresponsible of me not to meet your hunky neighbor and make sure that his intentions are honorable.”

“I, uh, might have accused him of being a fraud and then stormed out,” Charles admitted, shrinking back into his chair.

Raven paused on her way back to the kitchen. “Did he seem offended?”

Charles frowned. He hadn’t really let Erik speak before he fled. And that _hurt_ he’d felt—had that really been Erik’s? “He said he knew I’d need more evidence before I believed him.”

“Well, there you go then,” Raven said, continuing on her way to the sink. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Besides, if he’s a man-eating monster then he probably deserves to be offended.”

 

12

 

When Raven knocked on his neighbor’s door and it didn’t open within five seconds, Charles was relieved. They wouldn’t have to have this conversation after all.

Then it _did_ open and Charles would have tried to hide behind Raven but for the fact that her arm was through his, pinning him to her side.

Erik looked about the same as he had the day before, except that he now wore a purple turtleneck rather than blue. His feet were still bare, their long narrow toes curved together on the linoleum floor, and his hair tumbled out of its sleek comb on one side as if perhaps he’d been napping. Those green eyes, however, were just as intent as they had been yesterday, locking onto Charles with a sharp and wary scrutiny.

Then Erik’s eyelids flickered and he shifted his attention Raven. His face didn’t register surprise when he saw her, but Charles couldn’t tell whether it was because of the glamour, or if he saw the scales underneath and simply wasn’t impressed.

Raven waved with the hand that wasn’t latched onto Charles’ arm. “Hi! I’m Raven, and this is my brother, who you’ve met. We wanted to talk to you.”

Erik inclined his head with wry deference. “Happily. I’m Erik Lehnsherr. Come in.” He stood aside to let them pass.

After he’d closed the door behind them, Erik went into his exceedingly tasteful kitchen, where the appliances were all in white instead of the dull green Charles had in his own flat. He opened a drawer at his hip and took out a small pack of—Charles squinted; were those _cigarettes_?

It appeared that they were, for he picked out one of those familiar white-and brown shapes and offered it to Raven, who accepted it with utmost gravity. She let her glamour fall, uncovering her scales.

“I thought you didn’t smoke?” Charles asked her. In fact, she was one of the few people he knew who _didn’t_ use tobacco in any of its forms.

“I don’t,” Raven said, her chin held defensively high. Indeed, she tucked the cigarette under the cuff of her glove, ignoring the lighter in Erik’s hand. “It’s a ritual.”

“Oh. Should I have…?” Charles looked between them, confusion pinching the skin of his forehead.

Erik tipped an eyebrow back at him, and when Raven seemed at a loss for words, said, “It’s a gesture of goodwill. Not all of the fae appreciate it, but many do. They tend to view recreational smoking as… narcissism, in a way.”

Raven nodded, relieved. “Yeah, something like that. But _you_ can smoke if you want.”

“Oh, no, that’s all right—I don’t touch the stuff, myself.”

Erik shrugged, a minimal twitch of moment, and tapped out a cigarette for himself. He stood in internal reflection, his face lit by flame until he exhaled the first puff of smoke. Then he looked up at them again, holding the cigarette between finger and thumb. “Come; sit, and we’ll talk.”

He slipped past them and sauntered to the sitting room. Following behind Erik, Raven turned to look back at Charles and mouthed, _wow, he_ is _a hunk!_

Charles implored the ceiling for patience and sat down next to her on the sofa. He looked across to Erik, who immediately turned his head to return the scrutiny.

Charles smiled, which did not prompt a similar expression from Erik. “So, yesterday, you said you could help me with my—my telepathy?”

Erik nodded, once. “I did.” Smoke wreathed him, and as Charles shifted in place those pale eyes followed him.

“Great,” Charles said, glancing over to Raven, who tugged her lips down just a hair to tell him that, fae or not, she had no idea how this conversation was supposed to go either. When he turned back, Erik hadn’t moved and didn’t look likely to start speaking on his own, so Charles wet his lips with the tip of his tongue and continued. “Are you a telepath yourself, then?”

There was a flicker of eyelids, not quite a blink. “No. I only know some of the doctrine.”

“Doctrine, good, that sounds… good.” Charles exchanged another lost glance with Raven, and then back. “That’s good, is it?”

The cigarette tip glowed as Erik inhaled, and his hollow cheeks hollowed further. When he spoke, his words smoldered. “It’s the best you can reasonably hope for. There are few people left with that knowledge.”

“Ah. And… why’s that?” Charles asked, scratching behind his ear.

More smoke. Charles stared at Erik’s lips, reluctantly fascinated. “The books have all been burned.”

Against his will, Charles cringed. “That’s… _Oh_. Well. I can see how that knowledge might be rare now.”

“Indeed,” Erik said, and fell silent again, watching as always.

Charles drummed his fingers on the leather by his thighs—it really _was_ such a nice sofa, very spacious and sturdy—and turned to Raven again. Finally she took pity on him and leaned forward, her yellow eyes narrowed and her spine sinuous with coiled strength. “Mr. Lehnsherr. I’m not here to argue the value of your knowledge, but to add to it. You should know that, though my brother is human, I don’t care for him any less than I would if we’d been born together.”

Erik tipped his chin toward her and raised an eyebrow to indicate that he was listening, but did not interrupt.

“You should know that, if anything happens to my brother because of you, you’ll have my anger and everything that comes with it for as long as I live—which, as you know, is a very long time. Swear that you won’t allow any harm to come to Charles.”

Erik’s lips curled into a humorless smile. “By my will, I promise it.”

Raven remained where she was, leaning forward in her seat, until eventually she nodded curtly and relaxed. “Good. Then I won’t have to rip out your soul.”

Erik’s smile thinned. “Of course. I assure you, I mean your… _Charles_ no harm.” He drew out the name, rolling the vowel along his tongue, then transferred the weight of his gaze back to Charles, who resisted the urge to vanish between his shoulders.

He was beginning to realize, where he hadn’t before, that there was really _danger_ in this. He didn’t find it encouraging that Erik didn’t at least _try_ to tell Raven that he would never, ever do anything to Charles, and he definitely didn’t find it reassuring that Raven had dragged the promise from Erik under threat of metaphysical duress. But…

But Charles wanted his life to be normal again, and while he didn’t know what Raven was if not human, she was still his sister. If there were a safer option, she would have suggested it.

So this time, when Charles met Erik’s eyes, he didn’t look away. He sat straighter, and folded his hands in his lap. “When shall we start, Mr. Lehnsherr?”

A thin crease appeared around Erik’s eyes as he smiled. “Knock on my door at six o’ clock tonight. Bring your coat. I have an idea for improving your control.”

 

13

 

Afterward— _soon_ afterward, because they didn’t stick around to talk—Raven leaned on Charles’ island counter, which was in the same place in his flat as Erik’s but much more cluttered. “He’s not human.”

Charles paused in the middle of sorting through the frankly ridiculous number of apples Raven had brought him. “What? How do you know?”

“I don’t—” She stopped, frustrated, and stared at him as if he might already be able to pluck the answer from her mind. “I don’t know; not really. Most creatures have some kind of telling detail wrong when they’re in human form, some oversight, and Lehnsherr doesn’t. He looks and smells human, but he’s too convenient, and too calm. He could be a sorcerer or another changeling, but I don’t think so, and something powerful enough to have a disguise _that_ flawless…” She shrugged helplessly.

Charles set down the apple he held. “Should I cancel tonight?”

Raven sighed. “It’s up to you. I don’t think he’s evil, but there’s no telling what his motivations are. You need to learn, and most beings with real power are bound by the promises they make. Just… that goes the same for you, Charles. Think like a lawyer—don’t make any promises, even accidentally, and above all else: _be careful_.”

 

14

 

Later still, Charles sat in his armchair with a new journal spread over his lap, because he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to get back to the lab and he needed to do _something_ to make a professor of himself. At the very least, he could direct everything from his flat. McCoy wouldn’t mind.

Hopefully.

Instead of reading, however, Charles found himself staring at the wreckage of his balcony—staring, and thinking.

 _This is real_ , Raven had told him. _It’s always been real._

 

15

 

After seeing Xavier and his sister out the door, Erik ran a hand through his hair, exhaled slowly through his nose, and looked for something to occupy himself with. He had hours to burn through before his telepath-sitting duties began.

He balanced the checkbook of an elderly human named Max Eisenhardt, with whom he shared an address, a lease, and everything else as far as the courts were concerned. It wasn’t a chore he relished, but it took up less time than he would have liked. He preferred to keep most of his wealth in a more solid form whenever possible, so very little had changed in old Max’s account over the past month.

Erik set his pen aside and wiped the smudges from a few of the glasses that hung from the ceiling rack in his kitchen. He took a soft rag to the leather of his sofa and armchairs and brushed the few stray curls of carpet-fiber dust from their backs. One of the advantages, he supposed, of not being human: there was no shedding.

At that thought, he lifted his hand to his face and rubbed over his jaw to check for stubble. His human form didn’t really grow facial hair like a real, flesh-and-blood body did, but when he grew tired and achy enough his appearance adjusted to his mood. He certainly _felt_ like stubble, so it was no surprise when it prickled at his fingers.

It happened often enough that he kept a straight razor and shaving cream behind the bathroom mirror. He let the tap run until the water seared and then wet a cloth under it. He pressed this cloth over his face not because he needed to do anything so mundane as open his pores, but because he enjoyed the heat and the tradition of it. He closed his eyes against the steam and stood until the cloth cooled.

The sharp edge of the razor glided over his cheeks and up his throat, a luxury of steel that would have blistered most other magical beings, and he didn’t think too hard about what he was scraping off of his skin if it wasn’t really hair. It didn’t hurt, at least, and removing the physical manifestation of his exhaustion seemed to ease the feeling itself.

Erik watched himself in the mirror, noting the crease of his eyelids and the little swell at the tip of his nose, the pull of his lips as his contorted them for the razor. After he had rinsed the lather from his face and rubbed in aftershave he didn’t need, he leaned forward to stare into his eyes, hands hooked on the edge of the sink. Since when had he become so comfortable in this shape?

Keeping track of numbers in a book, working, shaving, mixing martinis… And now here he was, grooming himself to impress some human brat doomed to fall through the cracks of the quiet city—some human brat that he _needed_.

 _Pathetic_.

Erik pushed away from the sink and went back to the sitting room. He looked out at the sky and longed to stretch his wings there, but with Xavier so close he didn’t dare risk it. He would probably have to reveal himself to Xavier eventually, but it would be on his own terms.

Instead, Erik pulled the thin, gauzy curtains across the balcony doors. He closed his eyes and eased into his true body with all the relief of finally relaxing a muscle kept tense all day.

He lifted his claws off the carpet as he walked on all four legs, slipping between the table and sofa, which were placed just far enough apart to let him pass in his much wider dragon shape—a necessary aspect of the room’s layout he was sure went unnoticed by his guests.

Erik sidled up to the sofa and transferred his weight onto it with wrist and elbows, claws curled under, and then stepped up with his hind feet. He settled his chest down into the leather, which groaned but didn’t otherwise protest his weight. After all, he’d bought quality.

He stretched his wings up, wrapping the long webbed fingers of one over the back of the sofa and laying the other out to prop up on the armchair. They ached gratefully, still sour from being folded up inside his human form so soon after being pushed to their limit just two days before, and he lifted his head high to examine them for tears, tilting the webbing this way and that before he was satisfied that everything was intact.

Erik curved his neck around farther and laid his head between the swells of muscle where his wings joined his body, looking down the spines of his back to where his tail vanished over the arm of the sofa. He sniffed, nostrils twitching, and under the scent of his own aftershave—aftershave on a dragon; how _ridiculous_ —he could smell Xavier’s cologne, and the subtler water-smell of his adoptive sister.

His natural face was less flexible than a human’s, but Erik parted his teeth in something approximating a smile. How fierce Raven had been to threaten him, though she didn’t have the confidence of knowing what he was and how to deal with him. He respected that, and her attempt to bind him by his word—but while Erik tried to keep his promises when they were not too inconvenient, he was not bound by them, and he was not worried by the wodnic woman’s threat, heartfelt though it undoubtedly was.

He raised one pebbly brow to look up at the clock, and then let his eyelids fall closed. He was exhausted enough to grow stubble; he could justify the nap.


	4. Chapter 4

16

 

When the knock came, Erik was asleep. He jerked his head up, heard the scrape of the ashtray across the table and realized too late that he had caught it with the edge of his wing. It hit the base of the sofa and rebounded back under the table, spilling ash across the carpet.

He stepped down from the couch and sat on his haunches, gathering all of his extra mass and scales and leathery wing back into himself until he was human-shaped again. He checked the clock—six _already_?

Evidently so, because the knocker continued, less patiently now. Erik hastened to answer, pausing just within the threshold to comb his hair back through his fingers and check his face again for stubble, just in case the extended nap hadn’t been enough to prove his laziness.

Everything appeared to be in order, so Erik squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and opened the door with something more like his usual aplomb.

“Ah, hello!” Xavier, bundled into a black wool coat, smiled up at him, and then looked down at Erik’s bare feet and distinct _lack_ of coat. “…Are we not going out tonight?”

“We are,” Erik said, also glancing down at his toes. He didn’t technically _need_ to cover them, but he’d learned long ago that humans found it odd when he didn’t. “Just a moment.”

Taking a few steps back, he opened the closet and shrugged into a brown leather jacket. He bent down to pick up his shoes, socks rolled up inside, and then straightened, glancing back to see that he had an attentive audience. Xavier looked away quickly, pale cheeks coloring red, and Erik frowned. Was there something on the back of his trousers…?

He refrained from twisting around to look, and took his shoes with him to a chair so that he could pull his socks on in a more dignified fashion. If he brushed at his backside in the process of sitting down, he was subtle about it.

Xavier was wandering step by step into his flat by the time he’d laced his shoes up, so Erik stood quickly. “Well?”

Xavier’s skin reddened again. “You look good.”

Erik stared at him, eyebrows tipped up in perplexity as Xavier’s face progressed through a series of colors edging ever closer to scarlet, until finally he explained, “Good… _to go_. Yes. We’re good to go?”

Erik’s brow creased further until finally he let the question go. _Humans_.

 

17 

 

Xavier’s shoes clicked along on the pavement beside him, noisy compared to Erik’s silence—and not only with regard to his shoes. “Have you known other telepaths?”

Erik glanced down and back. Xavier hurried to keep up with him, hands shoved into pockets and shoulders hunched. He reminded Erik of a bird, feathers fluffed up against the cold of deepening shadow. “Yes.”

Xavier’s red lips curved in disappointment at the brief answer, the small muscles of his chin tightening. “Raven said that there aren’t many of us.”

“There aren’t.” Erik reached out to push at Xavier’s shoulder, and Xavier twisted his head around to see what he was doing. “Turn here.”

“Oh.” Xavier turned the corner, but didn’t stop talking. “Do you know other telepaths _now_?”

“I do.”

“Is that how you know how to train telepaths? Can I meet them?”

Erik sighed. He stopped and caught Xavier’s shoulders between his hands, holding him in place. He ceased talking immediately, and stared up with wide blue eyes. “Look, Xavier, just… Be quiet. I offered to help you, not to act as your personal encyclopedia.”

Xavier blinked at him. “Charles.”

Erik curled his fingers into the soft wool of Xavier’s jacket. It was much nicer than the cardigan he’d worn the day prior; very soft. He was reminded again of feathers. “…Excuse me?”

“Call me Charles. And if you won’t answer my questions, who will?”

The corner of Erik’s mouth twitched. “If you learn to use your gift? Anyone you want.”

Charles considered this, and then grimaced. “That’s… rather unpleasant. Who can I ask who’ll answer _willingly_? There has to be someone.”

Erik patted his shoulder, smirked, and let him go. “You’ll have to ask.”

He began walking again. There was a pause before he heard Charles following, now with a distinct lack of interrogation. Erik glanced back to see him frowning intently at the ground. Something tickled between Erik’s ears, and he couldn’t quite stifle his smile as he sent a burst of static coursing through his mind, snapping at the fingers snooping there.

Charles grunted low in his throat, pressing his fingers to his forehead. “I thought maybe you meant that I shouldn’t _ask_ …?”

“This isn’t your training exercise,” Erik said, stopping in the light of a pub’s windows. “Stay out of my head, Charles.”

The telepath glared at him from within the hunch of his shoulders. “Then what _are_ we doing? Where are we going?”

In response, Erik gestured toward the pub. “I felt like a drink.”

There weren’t many people inside—the menu was too expensive for students to favor and so this was an older, quieter crowd. Still, Charles stared in through the window with his mouth half-open, upper lip peeling from his teeth in horror. He transferred that expression over to Erik. “Were you listening when I said I couldn’t be in among people? It’s bad enough out _here_.”

“I intend to put you through your paces.”

“I don’t _have_ any paces,” Charles said, backing away from the window. “I thought that’s why I had you: to teach them to me.”

Erik stepped in close, blocking Charles’ escape with the walls of his splayed fingers, held to either side of him without quite grabbing hold. Charles shifted his weight in the space between Erik’s hands, looking doubtfully at them and then up at Erik’s face. His mouth pulled into an unhappy line, and Erik felt a pang of unexpected regret—though not, he was relieved to find, so much that he couldn’t proceed. “I told you that I couldn’t teach you.”

“I don’t want to drown,” Charles said, staring down at Erik’s chest.

Slowly, gingerly, Erik settled his hands on Charles’ arms. What could he say? He was used to inspiring fear, not soothing it, and he couldn’t admit that he wouldn’t risk Charles because he _needed_ him. “You can’t improve without challenging yourself,” he said instead, earning an arched eyebrow from Charles. “…Besides, I gave my word that I wouldn’t let any harm come to you, remember?”

A crease appeared over Charles’ nose, but he shoved his hands into his pockets and turned his head to look over into the pub again. “You’re sure this will work? I only have one brain, after all.”

Erik dropped his hands and took a half step back. “It’s not unlike what the old telepaths used to do.”

Charles looked back to Erik. “What did they do? And don’t think I missed that you didn’t say yes, by the way.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your telepathy, Charles, only your mind’s ability to guard itself from distraction. You won’t fry your brain.” He still looked unconvinced, and Erik sighed wearily. “The records said that one would assault while the other blocked, sometimes for hours. I can also tell you that I’ve never heard of a telepath going permanently catatonic from anything less than a direct psychic attack.”

Charles frowned, but apparently whatever he saw in Erik’s human mask was enough to satisfy him, because he nodded. “All right, I’ll try. It’s that or spend the rest of my life as a recluse, I suppose. Well, more of a recluse than I already am, at least.”

The good humor faded almost before it began. Charles took a deep, steadying breath, eyes fixed on the pub’s door, and started forward with determination—but then wavered when he reached the steps, and nearly lost his footing as he was rocked back onto his heels by the breaking of an invisible wave.

Erik followed in his wake and reached for his arm, which jerked at the touch of his fingers. Charles twisted to look back at him, eyes vague and preoccupied, but he shuddered into motion again to pull the door open and walk stiffly inside. His eyebrows furrowed and his lips parted, moving around the edges of silent words.

He seemed about to collide with a chair, so Erik took hold of his elbow and Charles came with him obediently. Leaning down, Erik asked, “Charles?”

Blue eyes drifted past his, and Charles’ voice floated thinly over the noise of conversation. “I’m managing.”

Erik frowned, but tugged on Charles’ arm, holding him tight to his side until finally he found a more secluded booth where they could sit. He guided Charles onto the bench and sank down opposite.

Erik laced his fingers together and regarded Charles critically. He was staring off somewhere above and behind, and Erik knew better than to turn and look. The red flush of his cheeks from the cold outside had gone, leaving him starkly white, and his hands were balled tight on the slick varnish of the table between them.

 “Charles?” Erik repeated, and Charles swayed, not quite looking at him. Erik sighed again and leaned forward, unlacing his fingers and sliding his forearms across the table. Charles’ fists fell open at his touch and Erik wrapped his hands through them, cradling Charles’ fingertips in his palms. He was surprisingly warm to the touch, more than when they’d shook hands, but then most of the humans whose skin Erik had touched were not, strictly speaking, _human_ any longer.

Charles’ eyes flicked down to his face. Slowly, tortuously, they focused, until Charles was looking _at_ him instead of through. He blinked, and looked down at their linked hands, then around at the other tables. His fingertips drew back along Erik’s palms as if he might take them away, but then he glanced up to Erik again, hesitating. The pink tip of his tongue smoothed over his bottom lip and, cautiously, he threaded his fingers more firmly through Erik’s.

“I think I’m all right,” he said, sounding out the words.

Erik curved his mouth into a smile and tilted his head slightly to one side, examining Charles from another angle. After all, a telepath learning to use his gift for the first time was a rare sight indeed. If he also felt a small amount of pride… Well, it might not be entirely unwarranted.

… _His_ telepath…

“Hi, are you two ready to—” The waitress who had approached their table came to a halt, staring down at their linked hands with shocked distaste. Erik frowned, confused, and was distracted when Charles gently but firmly pulled his hands away.

“Hello, darling,” Charles said, showing his teeth to her. “Just drinks tonight, correct, Erik?”

She readied her pen over a pad of paper, expression easing into something more like friendliness. “What are you having?”

“Brandy, no ice,” Erik said.

Charles leaned onto the table, still smiling. “I think I’ll have a—”

“Cola,” Erik told her, and in Charles’ stunned silence she took her opportunity to escape.

The look Charles gave him was thoroughly tragic. “ _Why?_ ”

“You can drink at home. The lesson on maintaining control while inebriated will be another night.”

Charles’ expression could have charitably been called a pout, but when his cola arrived the ice cubes rattled against each other and he didn’t protest any further. He hunched over the drink and sipped at the straw, looking out into the main part of the pub. Erik watched him come and go, self-awareness flickering in his eyes like wind-tossed flames, and considered reaching out to touch him again and interrupt his wandering. Just as he made up his mind to do so, however, Charles blinked and adjusted his gaze to meet Erik’s. “I could learn to block them out and then forget that any of this ever happened, couldn’t I?”

Erik’s first impulse was to lunge across the table and shake Charles, terrify him until he agreed never to even _think_ any such thing again, or perhaps even lie and tell him that no, he couldn’t. It was amazing how a single sentence, meant so innocently, had the potential to destroy so much.

Instead, Erik looked down into his brandy and exhaled slowly through his nose, calming himself enough to say, “You could, but whatever your income is now, it’s insignificant compared to what you could demand as a telepath.”

Charles frowned. “I didn’t become a professor because I _had_ to, Erik.”

Erik glanced up when he heard his name. Had Charles used it before? No, he hadn’t been invited to—but it sounded good when he said it. Names had power, though not the kind that humans liked to tell stories about, and Charles used _his_ name like he knew that.

“Anyway,” Charles continued, bending down to drink hands-free with the straw. Erik watched his lips purse around it, unaware that he _was_ watching until Charles began speaking again. “A person who would employ me specifically to uncover someone else’s private thoughts doesn’t seem like the sort of person I’d want to associate with.”

“Not even if you were asked to identify a murderer?” Erik asked, raising his eyebrow.

Charles tugged his lip between his teeth, then shook his head. “No. I should hope no one would base their judgment on my testimony alone, even if it were true.”

Erik shifted on the bench, studying Charles. This was not, he decided, a human he could lie to. Charles didn’t seem the sort to hold a grudge, but if he did then there’d come a time when Erik simply wouldn’t be _able_ to silence him, and… the idea wasn’t appealing. Charles deserved the truth, even if it wasn’t something he’d like. “Being an untrained telepath is dangerous. There are creatures that could control you, or use your sensitivities to hurt you. You might simply need some way to defend yourself. You’re better off embracing your telepathy than ignoring it.”

Charles cringed. “Is everything in your world so hostile?”

“Were that the case, we wouldn’t need to hide.” Erik looked away and drank from his brandy. “There’s good and evil in equal amount.”

“I see.” Charles’ gaze was sharper than before, and Erik chose to attribute it to his skill at blocking distractions.

 

18

 

Alcohol didn’t affect Erik the same way it did humans. He didn’t experience the chemistry, but the taste of spirits and—most importantly—the _idea_ of brandy was intoxicating. It buzzed deep in his chest, pleasant as he walked back with Charles, and perhaps this was why he didn’t mind that at some point, his and Charles’ elbows had begun to nudge against each other, and then never really stopped.

When Erik looked over to Charles he saw that his eyelids were drooping, and his chin was tucked down into his coat collar. Being in the pub had been tiring for him, successful though it seemed, and it had only gotten colder as the night progressed.

Erik’s arm twitched against Charles’, but he stilled it. He wanted to draw this human close, grant him warmth, perhaps hold him there until he succumbed to sleep, but… But Erik wasn’t kind, anymore, and he was sure Charles knew that.

So Erik walked next to Charles and ignored the slight tremors of his shivering, silent all the way to their building, where Erik opened the door for them both. He climbed the stairs slowly because Charles seemed inclined to be slow, and they reached their floor together.

“Good night, Charles,” Erik said, turning to leave Charles at the door to his own flat.

“Wait.”

Erik looked back at Charles, who had made no move to find his key.

“Thank you for helping me,” Charles said, and Erik nodded, moving to go once more. “But… I want things to be clear between us, in the interest of full disclosure.”

Erik froze, and now turned entirely. “What do you mean?”

Charles moistened his lips and glanced down at the lock on his door. “I’m grateful for your help, but I know you’re not doing this out of the kindness of your heart. I don’t relish the thought of being used, but I have to be realistic, so… Tell me: what does a _dragon_ need a telepath for?”

 

19

 

Charles couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer _speed_ with which Erik lunged down the hallway, seized his wrist, and then dragged him back to his own door, which he unlocked in one deft movement before shoving Charles through.

Then Erik crowded him up against the wall, a hand splayed out on his chest to pin him there. “What do you know about me?”

Charles raised his chin, both in defiance and because he had to look up at Erik. “I know what you are. I saw you on my balcony.”

Erik shoved him again, jolting the air from Charles’ lungs as he crowded still closer. “Who else knows?”

“No one,” Charles gasped, and pushed back at Erik, who whipped away to pace through his kitchen.

“I should _devour_ you,” he said, green eyes fixed on Charles.

Charles straightened his coat, both because it had been pulled crooked and because it helped distract him from imaging what it might be like to be torn apart and eaten. “I assure you, I have no interest in telling anyone of your secret.”

Erik made a skeptical noise in his throat, and beckoned for him to follow as he went to the sitting room. Cautiously, Charles peeled himself from the wall and did so.

“Sit,” Erik said, pointing to the same armchair Charles had used during his first visit, but there was nothing inviting about it this time. Erik’s flat—his _lair_ —his chair; Erik meant to intimidate him.

So Charles settled himself into the armchair, crossing his legs at the knee. “I must say, I don’t see how it’s much of a secret if you’re taking off from your balcony in broad daylight.”

Erik loomed above him, motionless as he considered his answer, or possibly whether _to_ answer. “Not all Sight is equal. You shouldn’t have told me that you remembered.”

Charles snorted. “How could I forget? I did assume that I was hallucinating, but given recent events I’ve been forced to re-consider. You owe me for the balcony, by the way.”

Erik stepped forward and leaned down, pushing his face in near Charles’ as he braced his hands on the armrests to either side. “You’re very glib for a person so very _alone_.”

Tilting his head back to look into Erik’s eyes, Charles made a conscious effort to keep his breathing slow and calm—because even though Erik didn’t currently have scales and claws he was sill taller, and might not have weighed much more but he _carried_ himself like a predator, all coiled muscle and _god_ he was almost close enough to kiss, if doing so wasn’t insanely dangerous and in fact probably fatal. “You swore that you wouldn’t allow any harm to come to me.”

 

 

One corner of those thin, too-close lips twitched upward. “Promises are only binding among fae and fools.”

Charles swallowed. “Really? And what about threats?”

“Your sister’s? Meaningless. If you intend to blackmail me, you won’t make it out of the room.”

Nodding, Charles held up a hand between them, and Erik pulled back to check his open palm warily. “Not at all. I’m not interested in magical politics. In any event, you need me.”

Erik’s eyes flicked back up to him, and he remained stubbornly silent.

“I’m not a fool, Erik. I saw your face when I suggested that I might reject my telepathy,” Charles said, arching his eyebrow.

Erik was still for a long moment, and then he laughed, no more than a hiss of air, and shoved himself upright. Charles breathed easier, but not too deeply, just yet.

“You might be overqualified,” Erik said, looking off toward the kitchen.

“Am I wrong?”

Those eyes locked back onto his. “No.”

“What do you need a telepath for, then?” Charles asked. Erik remained silent, so Charles sighed. “You’ll have to tell me eventually if you want my help. What’s out there that a dragon can’t handle?”

“I haven’t decided to ask you yet,” Erik said, turning to pace in a little circle through his ring of designer furniture.

“Do you have any alternatives?”

Erik paused, and regarded him sidelong. “I do know another telepath.”

“Whom you haven’t asked, despite telepaths being apparently quite rare and valuable.” Charles tilted his head, studying Erik’s profile as he, in turn, stared out through the balcony doors as if perhaps Charles would stop talking if left unobserved. “Which means that this is something you can’t ask people in your world about.”

“It’s of a private nature,” Erik said, shifting but not quite looking back to Charles.

Charles exhaled and glanced down at his knees. “Both you and Raven have told me that the world is dangerous for me now, at least until I learn to use my telepathy. I was told not to make promises, but… I need help. I’m offering you a favor in exchange for a favor.”

Erik turned. “I don’t yet know if you’ll be able to help me.”

“I’m an investment, then,” Charles said. “You don’t know if I’m what you want, just like I don’t know whether what you want me to do is something I would _consent_ to do.”

Erik blinked, and was quiet as he thought. “You would consider it to be the right thing to do.”

“Is that so?” Charles asked, doubtful.

Erik’s shoulders drooped, and he looked away for a moment. Then he straightened, inhaled, and met Charles’ eyes. “I will train you. I will… _protect_ you. And then, when I think you are ready, I will tell you how you can repay me. You are free to refuse.”

“And if I do?”

Teeth gleamed between Erik’s lips. “You won’t.”

Charles nodded, and set his fingertips against each other. _Think like a lawyer_ , Raven had told him. “Are there any other terms?”

Erik’s savage smile grew into a cold grin. “I’m a dragon, Charles, not one of the fae. If you don’t like what I do, you can complain, and I will be annoyed. If you annoy me enough, I’ll kill you. Those are my terms.”

“…I see,” Charles said, frowning. “Pleasant. Anything else?”

“Your caution is commendable, but misplaced,” Erik said, abandoning his grin. “I don’t play games.”

Charles uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “Then we are agreed? You’ll help me, and if possible I’ll help you, with a minimal amount of killing and blackmail toward either of us? Is there any…” Charles twirled his hand wordlessly, and Erik’s eyes followed the movement. “Is there a ritual handshake, or something?”

Erik smiled. “Just one more thing. In the interest of full disclosure…” He held Charles’ gaze, and with a jolt of surprise Charles saw that his pupils had turned catlike, his irises a brighter green. His skin _blurred_ , and streamed, and re-solidified into hard black scale. Erik’s silhouette grew, and his shoulders hunched down as his body took the shape of a huge lithe beast, muscular and scarred.

He shook his wings free and held them away from his body, crouched on four legs between armchairs and sofa, the blunt point of his nose fixed on Charles and green eyes watching, as always. His lips pulled back from too many teeth. “Are you frightened?”

Charles looked down at his hands where they gripped at the armrests, and pried his fingers out of the leather. He didn’t feel embarrassment; after all, Erik made for a _very_ large predator, and the fact that he was more intelligent than a mere animal was not especially comforting. “…Yes.”

Erik stepped forward, bringing his teeth close to Charles’ face, neck tense as if to strike. “Good,” he said.

His breath smelled faintly of brandy, and Charles could only just barely feel him in the back of his mind—that same razor’s edge of what he’d felt before: pain and sullen fury, but… But _calm_ , too. Reason.

Charles forced himself to relax. This was, after all, no different from when Erik had leaned over him before—this hissing creature was the same man, the same _dragon_ , only now with visual aid. Charles had refused to be threatened then, and the threat was no more real now that it had teeth.

Slowly, Charles raised his hand to Erik’s jaw, until his fingers brushed pebbled scales. Erik tensed, teeth parting, and Charles would have pulled away except that _Erik_ didn’t, only stared with those great green eyes, waiting—so Charles laid his palm flat on Erik’s jaw and felt along it back to the hinge, where the scales grew rough and began to spike. It occurred to him that, if Erik were human-shaped, he would be caressing his face.

Charles traced his fingers back down the line of Erik’s jaw and grinned. “Remarkable.”

Erik blinked, opened his mouth a little further, and tipped his head to the side, capturing Charles’ fingers between his teeth. He held them wedged between those finely serrated edges with gentleness at odds with the fact that those teeth were the same length as the fingers they held, thicker, and sharper than any lion’s. Erik’s eyes were half-closed, laziness betrayed by the sly watchfulness of his pupils.

Charles didn’t try to pull his fingers out but instead raised his other hand to scratch his nails under the soft divot of Erik’s chin, his smile turning wicked when Erik’s eyelids slipped closed and his teeth loosened around Charles’ fingers.

The truce lasted only a moment before those eyes snapped open again and, with a rumble from deep in his chest, Erik opened his jaws and shook himself free of Charles’ hands. He lifted his head out of Charles’ reach and his teeth slid together with scissor-like perfection, vanishing behind black reptile lips. “If you don’t mind.”

“Sorry,” Charles said, wiping his hand off on his trouser leg, though Erik’s mouth didn’t seem to have much in the way of saliva. Erik’s _mouth_. He imagined Erik as a human, little omnivore teeth pinched around the tips of Charles’ fingers, and blushed. Was it the same for Erik? Did he think Charles to be just as rude as Charles had considered _him_ , with his staring and prodding questions back on the balcony?

Erik rumbled again, less peevishly this time, and curved his neck away. “No matter.” Then his neck flexed into an _S_ as he turned his head to look back at Charles. “So, _brave_ Professor Charles Xavier—are we agreed?”

Charles studied the sullen shape of the dragon, so large and out of place in a London flat, and thought again: _remarkable_. Aloud, he said, “Yes, I do believe we are.”

The dragon—still Erik—inclined his head. “Good.”

 

20 

 

That night Charles woke to the sound of wings. He smiled into the dark of his room and pulled the blankets up over his bare shoulders, eyes sliding shut as he imagined what it might be like to fly.


	5. Chapter 5

21

 

It was a Saturday morning, but when the phone rang and Charles answered, it was McCoy who spoke from the other end. “Uh, hello, Professor?”

“ _Hank_?” Charles asked, squinting sleepily at the telephone’s dial as if it might talk back. He still wore his robe and had only just recently got around to making toast, which he held in one hand. It was later than usual, and he hadn’t called in to the department, but… “Hank, it’s Saturday.”

“I know,” Hank said, sounding apologetic, “but I thought I’d go to the lab and get some work done.”

Charles sighed. Had _he_ ever been that young and industrious? Clearly not, since he’d earned his Bachelor’s at a much more typical age. “All right. What is it? Do you need me to look over your research? I still can’t come in but I could give you directions to my flat.”

“Oh, um, no, that’s okay. I’m not quite done with this round yet. Actually, Professor, it’s…”

Charles bobbed in place, waiting. He glanced at his hand and remembered the toast, which he bit into quickly so that maybe he could finish chewing before he needed to speak again.

He heard the sound of Hank drawing breath. “Actually, Professor, someone came by asking for you earlier. She said it was important.”

Charles paused between chews. _She_? Not Raven, because Raven would come to his flat first. What other women did he know? Well… no one, really; at least, no one that he’d see again, and he didn’t have any female students this year. He swallowed, grimacing through the scrape of half-chewed toast down his esophagus. “What else did your visitor say?”

“Not much. She left a card, but all it has is a phone number. It seemed suspicious so I told her you were out of town and would get back to her on Monday.”

Pursing his lips, Charles nodded. Having such an independent, capable doctoral student often made him feel deeply unnecessary, but at times it really did come in handy. He didn’t need people calling his personal number with requests for lab positions or grading disputes. “Thank you, Hank. I think that’s a number I won’t regret ignoring, don’t you?”

“Probably not, Professor. So, uh, the research…?”

“Call me again when you have something. I’ll be reading to see what our illustrious colleagues are up to overseas.”

“Certainly. Until then,” Hank said, and Charles heard the click and buzz of the line going dead.

Shrugging, he hung the phone back on its hook and returned to his armchair, skirting the piles of books by habit and nibbling on the toast as he went. He sat, balancing his notebook and the September issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology on his lap, skimming with a frown past articles justifying racial differences and reading closely those on paleontological and molecular studies, commenting in his notebook on their methods and statistics until all that was left of the toast were the crumbs on his plate.

Something banged on the glass and Charles jumped, losing his notebook in the cushion of his chair. Erik was standing on his balcony, staring in at him with his hand shading the glass, and Charles flipped the journal shut as his heart continued to skitter up the inside of his ribs.

Charles got to his feet just as Erik let himself in. “You do know most people use the door, right?”

Erik looked up from a book he stepped over. “I used the door.”

“The _front_ door. People don’t climb over their neighbor’s balcony when they want to visit.” Charles laid the journal down on the armchair behind him and then bundled the robe more tightly around his otherwise mostly-nude body.

The corners of Erik’s eyebrows tipped up. “I’m not people.”

“Oh, well, since we cleared that up…” Charles took the crumb-covered plate and brought it to the kitchen with him, trying to look dignified as he went.

“Have you showered yet?” Erik asked, and from behind Charles’ back it sounded as if he must be frowning.

“It’s Saturday,” Charles said, rinsing his plate under the sink without giving in to the urge to check Erik’s expression.

“It’s almost noon.”

Charles propped the plate up in the drying rack on the counter. “Yes. On a _Saturday_. I don’t have work.”

He turned, and saw that Erik was staring in disbelief. “What about your training?”

“We didn’t make any plans. You just sort of…” Charles waggled his fingers. “…Kicked me out.”

Erik stalked forward into the kitchen, hands hooked into his belt as he looked around. He’d taken a break from the turtlenecks and now wore a white button-up shirt, and Charles found himself distracted by the way it caught against the curves of Erik’s chest. He decided that it probably didn’t hurt to look. After all, Erik was another _species_ , wasn’t he? So he most likely viewed Charles’ human form the same way Charles saw his dragon self.

…Most likely.

“A new plan, then,” Erik said, swinging around along his way to look at Charles. “Take a shower and get dressed. We’re going for a walk.”

Charles tore his eyes away from Erik’s beautifully sculpted pectoral muscles. It really was a shame that no one would be running their hands over them. “Are you taking me out to lunch this time?”

Erik raised his eyebrow. “If you like. But in my experience, humans prefer when you wear clothing.”

Charles sighed, giving in. He tried—unsuccessfully—not to think about Erik’s experience. “All right. Wait over in your place?”

Erik shook his head and shrugged, lips pursed indifferently. “No, I’ll stay.”

“All… right?” Charles started toward the bathroom, and after a few steps glanced back to see that Erik was following. After a few more, Charles stopped and turned to face him, raising his hand. “Excuse me, but—are you planning on following me all the way to the bathroom?”

Erik frowned. “Yes.”

“I’m going to take a shower.”

Erik’s frown deepened, and his forehead creased. “Yes, I know.”

“Um.” Charles leaned toward him, ducking his head confidentially. “I _will_ be taking this robe off during the course of that, you know.”

“It would get very wet if you didn’t,” Erik said with utmost delicacy, eyeing Charles as if he might be insane after all.

Charles made a noise of exasperation and massaged his temple with one hand. Cultural differences. Right. “Look, that, uh… We humans prefer to wear clothing _inside_ , too. Around… each other. Though you’re not human of course. Just, I would really rather you remained outside.”

Erik nodded slowly, but then said, “You’ve seen _me_ without clothes.”

For a moment Charles’ mind went blank, until he realized. “That’s different. You have _scales_ , and, and—” he flapped his hand downward, “—nothing _showing_.”

Erik stared back at him, tilted his head, was silent for a little longer; then lifted his hands in surrender and backed away toward the kitchen. “Well. If you’re so uncomfortable in your own skin, I won’t bother you.”

“Thank you,” Charles said, and hurried on to the bathroom, where he locked the door behind himself and showered with quick swipes of soap, as fast as he’d ever done.

 

22

 

Ten minutes later, Charles was mostly dry and snug in a stern gray suit, allowing Erik to lead him out the door.

It would have made sense not to trust Erik’s direction now that Charles had confirmed what he was, but instead he found it strangely… _comforting_ , almost. The earlier awkwardness of their cultural misunderstanding aside, Charles couldn’t help but sneak glances at the man next to him, charmed anew each time. He was walking next to a _dragon_.

Eventually, Erik caught one of his glances. “Something wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Charles said, flapping his hand. “No, actually, it seems that, once I found the knack to it, it’s much easier to block people’s thoughts. The only problem is that it requires my constant attention, and that’s difficult to remember when I want to focus on something else.”

Erik looked ahead and nodded. “You’ll get used to it.”

“Will I?” Charles asked, brows creasing. “It’s _very_ distracting.”

“ _This_ takes focus,” Erik said, holding his hand up to show Charles his splayed fingers—the veins crossed over tendons, wrapped in translucent flesh and dusted with hair. “This shape fights back. Also, everyone who uses a glamour sacrifices some part of their concentration to keep themselves hidden.”

“You’re not human, though. Is it different for you?”

Erik turned to him, a perplexed smile startled onto his face. “I have no idea; _you’re_ the telepath.”

Chuckling, Charles looked to his feet. “True. Whatever good that does me.”

Fingers traced his shoulder. Charles’ smile faded, and he stared at the ground so that Erik wouldn’t worry. More cultural differences, and this one Charles thought—maybe selfishly, maybe because it was so quaintly _nice_ just to have that contact—he might regret losing if he said anything to correct it.

“What do you say to trying, today?” Erik asked, his hand settling high on Charles’ back.

Charles lifted his gaze to see that Erik looked as fond as he’d sounded. He wasn’t doing anything so overt as smiling, but there was a softer crease to his eyes, and Charles could—he could _feel_ it, lurking behind the dam in his mind, buried in clinging silt but _there_. “Trying what?”

Erik angled his head toward the other side of the street, where another person walked heedlessly by in the other direction. “Being a telepath. Reading minds.”

Charles leaned over to look at their fellow pedestrian. Their section of street was otherwise fairly quiet. He leaned his head in closer to Erik and lowered his voice to ask, “What, you mean… _now_?”

“Too easy,” Erik said, patting Charles’ shoulder. His hand slide down the back of Charles’ suit jacket and returned to his side. “Wait until lunch.”

 

23

 

 _Wait until lunch_ turned out to mean _wait until we’re surrounded by people_ , and Charles thought he was justified in feeling a little betrayed. “Erik, I can barely hear _myself_ think, let alone anyone else.”

Erik made himself comfortable in the wrought iron chair next to Charles, surveying the couple at the only other occupied outdoor table with a suspicion that might well have been warranted, given the weather. “If you learn in comfort, you’ll resent a challenge.”

“I think there’s a great world of difference between challenge and impossibility,” Charles said, crossing his arms. It didn’t help that, now that they were no longer walking, he was also _cold_.

Erik gazed narrowly at him. “Remember what I said about complaining. You’re free to give up at any time.”

Charles grunted, but couldn’t think of a retort that wasn’t also a complaint, so he settled down a little more snugly in his own chair, wishing the metal would absorb his body heat faster. Or maybe it _was_ , and that heat was dissipating back into the environment just as quickly…

He bit his lip. “What am I supposed to be doing?”

Erik tugged the little menu out from the table centerpiece and frowned over it. “You said you’ve been blocking other thoughts from your mind. Is it a wall?”

Charles watched curiously as Erik’s eyes scanned down the menu. “Do you eat human food?”

He was treated to a long, weary stare. “…Evidently. Your answer, Charles?”

“Oh. Ah, more of a dam, I think.”

One of Erik’s eyebrows tilted up. “Sticking to the water metaphors, I see?”

Charles’ chin tightened as he pressed his lips together. “It’s _my_ head.”

“Of course. It’s very… _poetic_ of you,” Erik said, looking back to the menu, brows fixed high on his forehead. “The symbolic interpretation can be a useful tool. What’s that device they use on dams, for the fish…?”

“A fish ladder,” Charles said, looking around for a second menu. There didn’t appear to be one at their table, however, and he didn’t care to get up to retrieve one from another.

“Exactly. You have to be _selective_ , but _resistant_.” Erik prodded the tips of his index and middle fingers onto the tile tabletop to emphasize each quality. He reached to set the menu back in the center of the table, but Charles snatched it from him before he could.

“So I need to be a fish ladder—”

“No, a dam _with_ a fish ladder.”

Charles sighed, glancing over the paper in his hands. “All right, yes. But what does that mean, exactly?” Erik stared, silent, and Charles re-folded the menu, lying it down before him. “You’re not a telepath. Of course. Do I just… _start_ , then?”

Erik’s gaze flicked in toward the window. “Waitress first.”

“Hmm?” Charles turned just as the waitress reached the restaurant door. She went to the other table, accepted their money, then shifted her attention to their table, clicking up to them in her heels. They made their orders and she went away again.

Erik tilted his eyebrows at Charles. “Fish finger sandwich?”

“All this talk of fish,” Charles said, leaning back and crossing his legs. “I’ll just…” He closed his eyes, but Erik’s hand caught at his elbow, so Charles opened them again.

“Chose a target.” Erik gestured in through the window.

Charles looked in. “Oh. Um…” He kept his hand low to the table as he pointed. “That blonde woman, there?”

Erik’s voice purred by his ear. “No. Try that man.”

Charles followed the slant of his finger to a heavyset man in thick glasses, sitting on his own and messily helping himself to a plate of eggs, then looked back at Erik, who wore an expression of perfect innocence.

“What? He’s on his own. He’ll attract less attention,” Erik said.

Charles rolled his eyes, but wrapped his arms around his chest and squeezed shut his eyelids. Behind their dark he was vaguely aware of Erik breathing, of the tantalizing warmth radiating from him, but he pushed that away. _Like a fish ladder_ … Whatever that meant.

He lowered the gates in his mind.

The noise was sudden, and absolute. Charles could not gasp, could not _breathe_ ; he was too much and spread too thin, not an entity but an oil film laid over an ocean, tossed and broken by the waves. He tried to open his eyes, but which eyes, _which eyes_ and everything was so near and stifling and he needed air—

His hand hurt in a steel grip and _there_ , that’s where he was, and he flowed back into himself, cold again and gratefully hurting in the vise of Erik’s fingers tight around the delicate bones of his hand. He sobbed for breath and leaned onto Erik’s shoulder, because he was there already; Erik had shifted closer, and as the waters receded Charles realized that an arm lay wrapped around him, a much gentler hand cradling his side.

Erik’s grip relaxed and his bones ached in relief. Charles lifted his head and knocked it back down against Erik’s shoulder when it hurt too fiercely. He swallowed. “I forgot how… _unpleasant_ that could be.”

He felt Erik’s thumb stroke his hand and Charles opened his eyes— _his_ , at last—and checked their surroundings, wary and self-conscious. No one, he decided, was looking. The other couple had gone and the people behind the glass did not glance out, which was good because Charles didn’t think he could pull himself out of Erik’s warmth if he tried.

When was the last time he’d been held like this? Not flirtatiously, or out of obligation after anonymous intimacy, or even a quick feel-better squeeze, but simply… _held_?

Charles let his eyes slip shut, and savored the subtle cologne-leather scent of Erik.

“Try again,” Erik said, and Charles groaned. “Charles, you saw me when I didn’t want to be seen. You’re capable.”

“I didn’t say that I’m not,” Charles muttered, and pushed himself up off of Erik’s shoulder, though not away from him. “But I think it would be much less unpleasant if I could go somewhere _quiet_ and try this.”

Erik’s arm flexed around Charles, pulling him in more tightly to his side. “You can do it here.”

 

24

 

Charles tried again, and inside the restaurant a fat man sat suddenly straight and peered around him through coke-bottle glasses, which did not help him to see man outside who slumped against his companion, laughing, wincing, and then gagging.

Erik patted him on the back until color returned to his face, and had just drawn away from Charles when the waitress arrived with their lunch.

With the stack of fried fish and bread before him, and the blood still swimming in his head, Charles felt as if he’d made a bad choice. He poked at the top slice of bread with his fingertip, illness creeping in around his stomach, and then slumped back in his chair with a defeated sigh.

Erik looked over at him curiously before setting down his fork down amidst his much more sensible lettuce and greens. “You have to eat, Charles.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Charles said, staring across at his lunch.

“Telepathy requires energy, like any task. One day this will come easily to you, but for now: _eat_.”

Charles took his eyes off of his plate to look at Erik plaintively. “I really don’t want to.”

Erik exhaled, and turned his head to study the fish finger sandwich. Charles could feel his thoughts clicking away, though not what they were, and so he was no less surprised when Erik reached over and scooped up the sandwich in one hand, stopping the escape of one of the fish fingers with the other. Charles half-expected Erik to eat it himself, but instead Erik brought it up to hover just below Charles’ nose.

Charles winced back, and he arched an eyebrow. “Surely you’re joking?”

“You’ll feel worse if you don’t,” Erik said, looking utterly reasonable except for the part where he was patiently holding a sandwich steady before another person’s face.

The toasted crust brushed Charles’ lips. Perhaps not so patiently, then. Indeed, Erik had begun to frown as he prodded the sandwich against his mouth, and Charles thought that perhaps this might be another area where human and dragon etiquette diverged.

To prevent Erik from doing anything so radical as mashing his face with fried fish or pinching his nose until he opened his mouth, Charles twisted his head away and took the sandwich from him. “That’s enough of that, please.”

 Now that it was in his hands, Charles stared at the food. Though it had probably been present the entire time, the rich odor of salty grease snapped into his awareness, followed by those of butter and tartar sauce and the meatier smell of the fish itself.

Charles grit his teeth together as his stomach, only moments ago intent on escape, writhed with a sudden starving _need_. Glands under his tongue pinched and he swallowed saliva.

He decided he didn’t care that he’d be proving Erik right.

 

25

 

Charles said his goodbyes to Erik at his door and they went their separate ways, but only a few minutes passed before Charles heard tapping at his balcony and hurried out from the kitchen to let Erik in.

“You locked your door,” Erik said, frowning. He was barefoot again, and a little black gift bag dangled from his fingers.

“Not against _you_.” Charles beckoned him in and slid the door mostly shut again, leaving a gap for the breeze. “I’m more worried about other… _things_ getting the same idea. I’ll keep it open for you when I’m around, if you must insist on going that route.”

Erik nodded, toeing a few of the papers that lay on the carpet, spread out in neat order during an important project Charles no longer quite recalled. “I wanted to repay you for the damage to your balcony.” He looked up to meet Charles’ eyes, lifting the bag. “This is for you.”

 

 

Charles smiled uncertainly and accepted the gift. It was heavier than he’d expect if it was a check, but lighter than the size of the bag suggested. There was something inside, wrapped in soft cloth, and with a glance at Erik he pulled it out. Charles found an edge to the fabric and began to unravel it.

Before he reached the center, a glittering watch fell out from the folds and into the quick net of his fingers. He stared at the sleek golden rectangle of its head and the sapphire cabochon crown, black Roman numeral hours spread around the center of a white face, and he knew the name before he read it below the _XII_. “Erik… This is a Cartier watch.”

Erik leaned over his shoulder to see for himself, fingertips balanced along Charles’ spine. “Do you like it?”

Charles coughed against the back of his hand, hiding his smile. “Do you… Do you know how much it costs to repair a balcony?”

He turned and looked up at Erik, who frowned in concern. “Is that not enough? There are others, too.”

“Oh, good heavens,” Charles said, holding onto the Cartier as he unwrapped the cloth further to reveal another watch, the gold paler and the design more quietly understated, the names _Vacheron Constantin_ traced in miniscule sans serif across a buttery face. It gleamed brightly, unscratched, but Charles’ roaming eyes snagged on a divot partway down the leather strap where someone with a thicker wrist than his might fasten the buckle. “Hang on—where did you get these?”

Erik eyed him warily. “I found them. Why?”

“Well, for one thing, the Cartier alone—” Charles paused, looking up. “How many of these are there?”

“Five. Not all as nice as that one,” Erik said, nodding toward the first timepiece—mistakenly, perhaps due to the relative thickness of the gold. “But they were all in one place, and fit around my talons.”

Charles puffed out his cheeks, staring at the easy fortune he held in his hands. “I see. Well, you’ll be happy to know that any one of these is worth considerably more than the cost of a repairman. I hope you won’t take offense if I ask exactly _where_ you found them?”

Hesitating, Erik looked out through the balcony doors at the hazy skyline. “I could find it again from the air, but I didn’t take note of the street.”

Pressing the palm of his hand to his mouth, Charles hummed to show that he was listening, hoping that Erik couldn’t read human expressions well enough to know that he was trying not to laugh. “Erik, did—did you just swoop into someone’s home and _take_ these?”

Erik turned his head back to him, his mouth a stern line.

“Oh my god,” Charles said, torn between amusement and horror. He laid the watches back on the cloth, rolled it up around them, and tried to be just as gentle when he spoke. “I appreciate the gesture, Erik; thank you. However, as lovely as these are, I simply can’t deprive someone else of their treasures.”

Erik’s eyebrows pressed low over his eyes. “They’re _yours_ now.”

Charles smiled softly at him. “They’re in my hands, but they’re not _mine_.” Erik’s face twitched into perplexity, and Charles continued: “It’d be as if someone came in through your front door and took your sofa. You’d be upset, wouldn’t you?”

Erik shook his head, a mere twitch of his chin. “I wouldn’t allow them to.”

Arching his eyebrow, Charles asked, “Not even if you were away?”

“I would hunt them down, but it wouldn’t be mine if I couldn’t protect it. That’s fair.”

Sighing, Charles massaged his temple. “Perhaps by dragon logic, but I’m human, and regrettably, I have human sensibilities. Please give these back, Erik. You don’t need to repay me for the balcony; it’s really nothing to me.”

For a long, agonizing second, Erik only stared at him, motionless, his expression perfectly blank, _absent_ , and Charles’ heart knocked against his chest when he thought that Erik might turn and fly away, or perhaps simply _eat_ him as he had promised, but Charles held his ground and held the bag out for Erik to take.

Finally, Erik blinked and glanced down at the sleek black bag hanging from Charles’ fingers. Thin lips pressed thinner, he snatched it up and with a twist of his shoulders he whirled to go, reaching up to grasp the edge of the balcony door.

He stopped when Charles grabbed at his elbow, but didn’t look back.

When he and Raven had been children, a series of fantasy books had appeared in the otherwise austere and perfectly _adult_ Xavier library. He realized now that she must have acquired them somehow, perhaps because she’d been bored by literature or maybe because she’d felt lonely surrounded by tomes of human affairs. She’d delighted in stories about fairies and dragons, and while Charles doubted that Tolkien wrote literal truth, the central concept must have come from _somewhere_.

Cautiously, he thought back to Smaug the dragon. Erik was not nearly so unpleasant, but he did have his treasure—in leather and walnut, if not jewels and gold. And Charles… He knew without needing to look around that his flat must seem destitute to a creature who preferred to keep his wealth in a place he could touch, perhaps—because Erik did not seem exactly _greedy_ —to display as a demonstration of skill.

Like a male shrike adorning its chosen bush with tiny carcasses he did not even need to eat, or a bower bird decorating its stage, if he dared to apply a naturalistic model to a supernatural creature. It seemed logical to hypothesize that anything so extreme as sharing must be nearly unheard of between male dragons.

The watches were not just repayment; they were not meant to settle an account, appraised and sold away.

“Erik…” Charles moved his hand up, cupping his fingers around Erik’s bicep. “Please don’t think that I’m taking your gift for granted. They’re very beautiful, and I know they’d be sorely missed.”

Erik’s shoulders jerked as he laughed once. Charles saw the barest edge of his face as he turned—the tip of a nose and eyelashes. “I understand that, Charles. I’m a dragon, not a fool.”

“Then stay,” Charles said, pulling gently at Erik’s arm. “Before you take them back we can look over them together. They _are_ very nice, after all. We might as well appreciate them while they’re here.”

The arm he pulled at was unyielding, but Erik turned slightly to offer the bag for Charles’ perusal. “Help yourself, but I don’t know why _I_ need to be present.”

Charles plucked the bag from Erik’s hand and dangled it over his shoulder as he sauntered back to the brighter lights of the kitchen. “Then don’t be. It’s up to you.”

It was agony not to look behind, and Charles circled the counter so that the sight of his back wouldn’t exclude Erik from finding his own place to lean. He gave every indication of not caring in the slightest whether Erik followed as he unrolled the cloth full of watches and stared at faces and names he hadn’t seen since he’d given up society functions.

Then Erik’s fingertips crept into his vision, and his hands, and Charles glanced up, smiling to see that Erik was very carefully not looking at _him_ , either, as he settled noiselessly on the other side of the counter. He was tense, and wary, but as Charles picked up each timepiece in turn and complemented the craftsmanship and design, listing their complications, Erik slowly relaxed onto his elbow, watching Charles speak.

 

26

 

It was late when Erik got the call, and he was reluctant to pick himself up out of the cushions strewn about his bedroom. The phone continued to ring, so he shifted to human form—no dragon could truly sleep while concentrating on his shape—and went to it. He answered, listened in silence, and agreed.

Erik slammed the phone down on its hook and hung his head, breathing deeply, but he could not linger for long so he slid out of his skin and back into scales. He would need to fly.

He rarely closed the door to his balcony entirely, so it was a simple matter of pushing it open with his nose and then he held his head out in the night air, tasting smoke and concrete on his tongue. Light caught his eye and he hesitated when he turned and saw Charles in his flat, reading by the glow of his lamp.

Pain twisted in Erik’s chest, wounds and regret one and the same for a creature more will than flesh. He hadn’t lied in telling Charles that there existed good and evil in equal measures, but he didn’t look forward to when the changeling discovered just how vast a range those qualities could cover—because he would, inevitably. Erik required it of him.

For now, at least, Charles could sit and read unhaunted by the harsh truths of the world, and Erik would allow him to.

It would be rude to leave without saying anything, however. Erik might have been black against a black sky, but Charles’ senses were sharp enough that he would hear the beating of wings and know the sound for what it was, so Erik ducked back into his flat, searched around in the dark—his eyesight was excellent, just not at night—and then hooked a talon carefully through the loops of the gift bag.

Hopping on three legs was hardly dignified for a dragon, and crouching along on his haunches as he balanced with his free forelimb wasn’t much better, but it would hardly matter once he was in the air. He tolerated this private humiliation until he was on the balcony.

Erik leaned his scaled hand on the railing gingerly. It creaked but held up well when he wasn’t actively crashing into it, so he reached his neck over to nose open Charles’ door and poke his head inside.

Charles looked up at the sound, surprised for only as long as it took to see Erik before he was smiling delightedly. “Erik! You know, I don’t think I’ll ever stop being amazed by how absolutely magnificent you are.”

A thrill of delight shivered through Erik’s scales, chased by an immediate cringe of guilt. It was nice to be appreciated—decidedly less so to respond with a lie.

He lifted the bag, glanced back, and turned his wrist until it shined in the light. “I’m going to return these now. I thought you might like to know.”

Charles beamed. “Oh, fantastic! I do hope you’re still alright with that?”

Dipping his chin in a sinuous nod, Erik said, “I am.” Inwardly, he decided that he would simply have to find something Charles couldn’t object to; something that he would cherish without tiring of, because it was becoming increasingly clear to Erik that Charles’ flat—barren except for its mess of books—was how Charles _wanted_ it. Humans, he reminded himself, did not value the physical permanence of _things_ because they were themselves physical and quite blissfully unaware of how vulnerable that left them.

Those blue eyes gleamed fondly at him in the lamplight, and Erik was glad that his face could betray little because his breath caught and for the very first time he began to doubt— _could_ he find anything extraordinary enough to impress this strange, chemical creature?

Erik might have been a dragon, and he suspected that he was one of the very last, but he was _purpose_ and energy wrapped into wings and scales. He looked the way he did because of what he _was_. Charles, however… Charles had grown from a collection of inert materials, proteins and fats and sugars spun into a body with only a smudge of magic in it and yet he was _alive_ and staring back and his eyes glittered with an awareness sharp enough to cut.

As a rule, Erik didn’t care for humans; they were in general as dull and fearful as common animals and he could never forgive the traits that had robbed him of so much. Looking at Charles, however… he could appreciate how they’d risen to dominance so swiftly.

“Take care,” Charles said, clearly more from fondness than entirely necessary caution, and Erik nodded again. He withdrew his head from Charles’ flat and, with a great heave of his hind legs, threw himself into the air. The membranes of his wings flared and caught and with a few solid flaps he was soaring, all of the shuffling clumsiness from before forgotten, as elegant as death from the skies because that was precisely what he was.


	6. Chapter 6

27

 

This time Erik did not crash into the balcony, and it was his own that he landed on, wings straining to slow his descent. They trembled and longed to close, but he held them open by force of will and even convinced them to beat, the muscles of his chest searing with effort.

His wings scraped brick and he dropped down onto the balcony, partway through his open door, where he stumbled and nearly collapsed—but he would have shattered the glass, so he kept to his feet and staggered into his flat, tail dragging behind him.

Erik passed by his sofa, where he stopped, swayed, and then tipped over onto it, settling down with a pained grunt. He lay with his head draped over the armrest and panted for what seemed a long time. Agony radiated through him with each breath and he could not focus for long enough to squint through the dark at the clock on the wall, but he was sure it must be very late.

Still, it wasn’t long before he heard the sound of a door slithering open, and Erik shut his eyes in dismay when, shortly after, Charles called softly: “Erik?”

There was a straining, listening silence, and Charles called him again, louder. Erik tried to remember whether the light had been on when he landed, but he thought he would have taken note if it had.

The railing jangled under Charles’ impatiently drumming fingers, and Erik heard the scuff and scrape of a foot over loose tile. Charles sighed, and then the railing rattled again as he climbed up over it, mumbling incoherent indignation.

Erik opened his eyes again and stared over at the door to his room, gauging the distance, but Charles was already on his balcony and even human eyesight wasn’t _that_ bad so he sighed, gathered the ragged edges of his concentration together, and shuddered into human form.

“Erik?” Charles’ voice grew uncertain; he must have been standing in the doorway. “I heard you land. I was hoping I could ask you something…?”

He waited, and Erik thought that he might actually invite himself inside, but instead he heard the soft exhalation of Charles’ breath, the brush of his hand leaving the doorframe, and the shuffle of his feet moving back. He was leaving.

The railing sang under Charles’ touch, and Erik rolled from his side onto his back, head twisted around to face the ceiling. “Charles.”

Silence, and then Charles’ footsteps returned, slowly, until they were muffled by carpet.

“Erik, I—you know, it's _awfully_ dark in here. Would you mind if I turned on the lamp?” An armchair thudded as Charles caught his foot against it, and he muttered to himself to justify the lapse in memory.

Grunting something like acceptance, Erik draped his forearm across his eyes. Moments later, Charles found the lamp, fumbled with the unfamiliar switch, and the inside of Erik’s eyelids flooded with red.

There was a sharp hiss of breath from Charles’ direction. “God, Erik—is that _blood_?”

Erik peeled open his eyes, squinting against the light, and pressed his chin down to his chest to examine his shirt, pinching the fabric up to get a better view. He blinked at the ruddy stain and decided that yes, it probably was. Waving his hand vaguely, Erik said, “I don’t—my concentration…”

Charles’ hands were on him, plucking gently at his shirt as he undid the top few buttons and tugged the garment aside. Erik watched as Charles’ fingers traced over his collarbones and down his pectoral, following the crust of drying blood over unbroken, healthy skin.

A crease appeared between Charles’ brows as he stared, hand smoothing onto Erik’s chest. “There’s no wound.” He met Erik’s eyes, frowning. Slowly, he lifted his hands from Erik’s chest and moved them up, framing but not quite touching Erik’s face. “But I can _feel_ —” He winced away, withdrawing his hands. “Erik, what’s going on?”

Erik looked up at Charles and considered lying. Charles was human, after all; _only_ human, no matter that he was a changeling and a telepath, or that he didn’t look at Erik with fear and loathing. Erik had his privacy to consider. But… But he was lying weakened on his back with a human looming over him, one of those same creatures responsible for his long exile, and… It had been a long time since anyone had looked at him with such concern.

He closed his eyes and let the scales rise beneath his skin, curling onto his side to give his wings room to emerge. With a sigh of relief, he became himself again.

Charles was silent for several seconds, and then Erik felt hands again, brushing hesitantly over the edges of his neck and shoulder scales. He heard Charles inhale, a long, shuddering noise, and then he spoke. “Who did this to you?”

Erik peered back at him through a slit eyelid, studying Charles, who continued to examine the wound with tentative, probing fingers, lip forgotten between his teeth as, emboldened by Erik’s determined stillness, he pulled the tear in Erik’s skin back with his thumb to estimate the depth.

At this, Erik hissed.

Charles jerked his hands away and stood motionless until he was sure that Erik wouldn’t lash out at him. He tried to wipe his shaking hands on his trousers until he realized that his fingers were smeared with dragon blood, so instead he held them awkwardly out from his sides.

“What happened?” Charles asked, looking into Erik’s eye with studied calm.

Breathing hurt more without the distraction of keeping himself in human form, but Erik drew breath to reply. “I was stabbed.”

“ _Stabbed_ —for heaven’s sake, by _what_ , a sword?” Charles stared as Erik closed his eye again. “What, really? A sword?”

Erik lifted his head up and opened both of his eyes, pointing his nose more-or-less in Charles’ direction. “Swords are the weapon of choice for humans with the Sight. The iron… It hurts most magical creatures more than a sharp edge alone. Like poison.”

His head wavered, and Charles reached up to hold his jaw steady between his hands. The human smiled, weakly, and tried to be wry when he said, “But not for dragons?”

“Especially for dragons.” Erik rested as much weight as he dared into Charles’ hands—which was not much at all. It was truer than he wanted to admit: in the old days, dragons had fallen like wheat before the points of swords. Even now, beneath his seething anger at the users of those swords and the sick pain of his wound, he wondered bitterly why his kind hadn’t simply avoided the ordinary humans who’d lured them close. If only they hadn’t been so trusting… “But not me. I’m resistant; adapted. My enemies never expect me to live beyond the first blow, if they land it.”

Charles stared at him, aghast. “But that’s—that’s _terrible_.”

 

 

Erik lifted his head out of Charles’ hands and instead settled his chin gingerly amidst the folds of his wing, nearly breathless with the pain of movement. “It’s not your place to judge, human.”

Charles let his arms fall to his sides once more. “No. I suppose not.” He looked down at Erik’s chest, frowning. “We should get this taken care of.”

Snorting through his nostrils, Erik rumbled, “Contrary to appearances, I’m not flesh and blood. The wound will keep.”

“So, what, we just… leave it?” Charles’ lips pushed together in disapproval.

Erik looked him over mutely. The injury couldn’t possibly become infected; whatever modern science said about its _germs_ and _bacteria_ didn’t apply to him. On the other hand, a physical wound might have been better—this wound was not in his flesh but in his will, in his very _self­_ , and could fester and scar just as surely, in its own way. “…It’s possible that treatment would help. It was not the blade that cut me, but the violence. The act of your concern may counter it.”

Charles stepped back, a crinkle of thoughtful confusion appearing on his forehead even as he nodded agreement. “I presume you must not have any first aid supplies yourself, so I’ll be right back with mine. Just… stay here.” He looked into Erik’s unblinking gaze, human eyes full of curiosity and worry, nodded to himself, and left for the balcony.

 

28

 

Charles fished through the pile under his bathroom sink and found the black canvas bag of his first aid kit, which was filled with a rather dismal collection of old antibiotic creams, a bottle of peroxide, gauze, and bandage tape.

He’d mostly had use of it back in Oxford when he’d tripped one too many times on the way back from the pub, and Raven grew tired of fruitlessly scrubbing bloodstains out of whichever tailored shirt or fluffy towel he got to first. Many of the smaller gauze pads were therefore long gone, leaving only the largest in the kit, but that was perfect for his needs.

Ideally, he would have liked to see that grievous puncture wound flushed and stitched, but Charles’ biological expertise was mostly limited to what he could see through a microscope, and he suspected neither doctor nor dragon would appreciate professional assistance.

Then again, Erik claimed not to be flesh and blood. Charles could not help but wonder what that would made him; the dried brown smear on his hands certainly _looked_ like blood, but then Erik was also very clearly a _dragon_ and so all bets were off. He would really have to question Erik about it sometime when he wasn’t bleeding onto his designer furniture…

Charles bundled up the handles of the bag and closed the cabinet drawers. He stood, hesitated, and grabbed a few washcloths before hurrying back to the balcony.

Erik was right where he’d left him, still draped over the sofa with his wings in a pile of bone and leather behind. His eyes slid open, catlike pupils narrowing as they focused.

An instinctual fear raced through Charles. This was a creature who could kill him in an instant—moreover, this was a creature who in all likelihood _had_ killed, and very recently at that. Charles didn’t know what had happened—yet—but he had every reason in the world to turn around, pack up all of his books, and move in with Raven. Still…

If Erik had been a man, and if Charles had walked in to find that he’d been knifed, or bludgeoned, or shot—Charles would have given him the benefit of his doubt. For all of his idiosyncrasies, and all of his scales and claws and _teeth_ , Erik was still a person, and his neighbor, and Charles simply had no choice but to help.

So he laid the first aid kit on the coffee table and went to the kitchen sink with one of the washcloths, wetting it under the tap. Then, holding its dripping edges curled to keep the water in, Charles walked back to Erik’s side and knelt down in front of those meat-hook talons. He put his hand on Erik’s shoulder, rubbing his fingers along the smooth surface of his scales, and looked over into those green dragon eyes. “Now, don’t take my head off, all right? Whatever you’re made of, I imagine this won’t be pleasant for you.”

Erik blinked, a translucent membrane following in the wake of his eyelid, and said, “I won’t kill you, Charles.”

“And I’m very relieved,” Charles muttered, leaning in to work.

Erik didn’t try to kill him, but he cringed at Charles’ touch and began a low, guttural hiss that spiked and sank but never really went away. Charles kept his head ducked down, narrowing his focus to the red gash of muscle before him because he thought he might not be so calm if he saw those long, sharp teeth bared near his head, regardless of what Erik had promised. Instinct was its own powerful force, more compelling than logic.

Charles had never treated a supernatural creature—not _knowingly_ , considering Raven—so he wasn’t sure what Erik needed. He tried to be thorough, however, and was liberal with the antibiotics, stomach twisting as his fingers dipped in where they shouldn’t be able. He wasn’t squeamish; the blood did not bother him, nor the soft subcutaneous fat, or its magical equivalent.

The wound itself, however…

Even animals turned away from prey if they perceived any chance of injury, and for the most part humans were no different unless driven by some desperation. From Erik’s short answers, Charles did not think that he had been surprised in the course of returning Charles’ gift, but rather that it had been a deliberate encounter.

 _Benefit of the doubt_ , he reminded himself. Erik deserved that much from him. After all, it had been someone _else_ who’d stabbed him.

With one last anxious wish for a stitching needle and the knowledge to use it, Charles lay a thick pad of gauze over the cleaned wound and then secured it with soft white tape, pressed the adhesive into the creases of Erik’s scales, unable to stop himself from running his hand over them again. They were like round glass tiles, warm and ticklish against his palm. The feeling was addictively novel.

“Done,” Charles said, looking up. The growling had faded to a low rattle, and those green eyes were dull and absent.

Erik blinked sluggishly and shifted his forelimb, cautiously at first and then with more confidence. He grunted. “Good. It’s… better.”

Charles nodded. The ache in Charles’ head—a pain so strangely _other_ even as it was his own—began to subside.

With a huge, expansive breath, Erik shifted his weight, and Charles shoved himself away and to his feet so that he wasn’t stepped on when Erik stood right where he’d been kneeling. Erik swayed but didn’t collapse, holding most of his weight on three legs, and his head swung around to point at Charles, who reached up to pat the firm curve of Erik’s neck. “Go lie down. I’ll clean up here.”

For a moment it seemed like Erik might refuse to move, or would be _unable_ to move, but then he dipped his chin and turned to shuffle off toward the dark rectangle of his bedroom doorway, his wings hanging low at his sides and tail drooping behind. The corner of Charles’ lips quirked up and he bent down to gather the dirtied washcloths from the table.

He rinsed them, then went back to the sitting room to sponge the blood from Erik’s sofa and table before it could dry. He examined the carpet and found a few dark spots that resisted his efforts, so he gave up on them, deciding that it would be far less difficult to talk Erik into hiring a cleaner at some later date.

Charles dropped the cloths into the bin—the habit of sterility was too ingrained in him to leave bloodied rags around, even if Erik _wasn’t_ capable of carrying disease, which he had no proof of—and paused. He would check on Erik one more time before leaving. It wasn’t impolite if it was truly concern, after all; far worse to leave without saying anything.

He crept up to Erik’s bedroom and peered in, but couldn’t distinguish a bed from the shadows. Soft breathing filled the darkness, slow for a human but not for a creature of Erik’s size, so Charles stepped in cautiously.

Eyes owlishly wide, he stared around himself, hands outstretched to feel for obstacles as he followed his ears. There was a darker shape by his feet, and Charles stopped to nudge at it with his toe.

It was a pillow. Charles pushed it out of his way and continued, only to stumble into another pillow. He bent down to pick it up and frowned when his fingers encountered not just one or two pillows but _several_ , overlapping and piled one over the other in a sort of—he furrowed his eyebrows—pillow nest?

Something knocked into his backside, and Charles tumbled forward with an _oof_ of surprise, landing sprawled amidst the pillows and harder shapes, which curled around his body, pulling him in. Charles struggled but the only thing he could grab at were more pillows, which followed in his clenched hands, too soft and large to be weapons.

Charles found himself caged in against a warm chest, smooth pebble-shapes against his cheek, and he let go of the pillows with a huff of irritation in favor of tugging at one of Erik’s scaly arms. The chest in front of him rumbled sleepily. “Erik, for goodness’ sake, it’s _me_ you’ve got hold of.”

Long, powerful fingers splayed over his back and pressed him in closer, and Erik moved a little. Charles wriggled against him, alarmed at the thought that Erik might roll over and crush him, but the dragon’s embrace remained both gentle and _firm_.

A snort of hot breath ruffled Charles’ hair. “I know it’s you, Charles.”

Charles stilled, curling his hand against Erik’s chest. His fingers touched the edges of bandage tape. “Will you let go of me, please?”

Erik growled, and something soft and yielding wrapped around Charles in addition to Erik’s arms, enveloping his body— _wings_ , Charles realized. “No.”

Charles considered being angry, but settled on rolling his eyes. “And why not?”

“I want you by my side,” Erik said, resting his jaw against the back of Charles’ head. “You’re— _mine_.” The limbs around him clung tighter.

“Not so tight,” Charles squeaked, and Erik relaxed his grip. After taking a few deep breaths to recover, he said, “Is this another one of those dragon concepts that doesn’t really apply to humans?”

There was another rumble that might have been agreement.

Charles sighed. “Look, you—you can’t _own_ a person, all right? I’m not yours.”

“I can, and you _are_ ,” Erik said. He did not sound especially annoyed, but more—patient, almost. Even, strangely, _fond_. “My student, my neighbor— _mine_.”

“Many people have neighbors and students without owning them,” Charles said, straining to turn his head around and look where he thought Erik’s eyes might be. “I don’t own my lab assistants.”

Erik’s jaw rubbed against Charles’ forehead as he spoke. “I don’t know or care how it works between humans. I’ve taken you. I _have_ you.”

Charles froze. His pulse had already been raised, in part due to struggling, but now it found fuel in the shape of fear. “Does that make me your slave, as well?”

A growl shook through him, and Erik nuzzled his hair. “No. I have no interest in confining you.”

“Aside from right now, you mean?” Charles asked.

Reluctantly, Erik’s embrace loosened, until Charles thought he might be able to pull free if he tried. “My race was destroyed by humanity. I have no love for your kind, Charles, but _you_ I would treasure, if you let me.”

“Like your sofa.”

Erik hesitated. “You’re worth at least five— _six_ sofas, to me.”

Charles arched his eyebrow, though he wasn’t sure Erik could see it. “Is that all?” There was no reply, so he sighed again and said, “Well, your honesty is refreshing, at least.”

Erik’s voice was softer now; gentler. “Sleep here with me tonight, Charles. Your presence is… comforting.”

Charles hesitated. Was this behavior he really wanted to encourage? It was abundantly clear by now that the dragon concept of ownership was very different from his own, but what about Erik’s idea of confinement? Charles’ insides twisted—this was a giant supernatural predator who could not just kill him with a swipe but also push him around, carry him, trap him, do _anything_ to him—and Erik viewed him as a _possession_.

He shuddered in the heat of Erik’s body. “I’d rather be on an equal standing with you.”

Erik drew away, perhaps to look at him; Charles could now make out the shape of his shadow. “You should feel honored. You would have no fiercer guardian.”

“What’s wrong with being friends, exactly? Can’t friends protect each other and treasure each other and, ah, cuddle, too?” Charles asked, squirming against Erik—but he was trapped in the folds of Erik’s wing and didn’t want to risk injuring that delicate limb.

Erik stopped moving, muscles tense against Charles’ body. “Friends.”

“Yes, you know. Someone who looks out for you, whom you go drinking with, or out to eat with, or…” Charles combed his brain for a fourth option. “Or _talk_ to.”

Scales slithered against scales. “In what way is that different?”

“We’d be each other’s friends, _equally_. Not just mine or yours.”

A low hiss. “And why would I want that?”

Charles reached out for the silhouette of Erik’s head and closed his hand around one of those long horns, stroking his thumb over hard bone. “It’d be a lot less lonely, for one thing, and I’d much rather be your friend than your pet.”

Erik bowed his head down, sinking with the weight of Charles’ arm until his chin touched Charles’ forehead. “The idea of friendship between our species is ridiculous.”

“It’s a ridiculous universe, isn’t it?” Charles said, rubbing his fingers under Erik’s jaw. “In any event, our respective species have nothing to do with it. We enjoy each other’s presence, don’t we? As individuals.”

Charles’ bones rattled with a deep rumble of consideration from Erik’s chest. Claws touched his back. “Do you, now?”

“Despite your frightfully bad manners, yes, somehow I do.”

“Mind your own, human,” Erik said, not unkindly. “But, very well. I’ll play at being your friend, if it pleases you. If it’s possible, I’ll even call you that in truth.”

Charles bit his lip to contain his smile, just in case Erik could see. It was difficult to take Erik’s prickliness seriously when he’d kidnapped Charles for enforced snuggling. “You’re very pessimistic, aren’t you?”

Erik’s laugh sounded no different as a dragon—that same sharp exhalation of breath, bitter and restrained. “I hatched last century, Charles. I’m a realist.”

“You hatched?” _This_ grin refused to be contained.

The wing around him shifted self-consciously. “Of course.”

There seemed to be a question in that, of where did Charles _think_ dragons came from, so he said, “Well, I just thought you might say that you sprang fully-formed from the hillside, perhaps.”

Now Erik sounded truly bewildered. “No. No, we have eggs. Not like birds, but…” He growled again, and there was a note of embarrassment about it. “I’m not explaining this to you.”

“But I’m interested now! I’m a biologist; it’s relevant to my interests.”

“Then as there’s no biology involved I’m sure you’ll be content in not knowing,” Erik said, bumping his chin into Charles’ head pointedly.

Charles pouted until he remembered, again, that it was very dark in Erik’s room, so instead he rolled his eyes and sighed. “All right, be obstinate about it.” He paused, just in case Erik would decide to _not_ be obstinate, but to no effect. Instead, he found that he yawned. As he squinted his eyes closed they burned, and weariness made his joints heavy.

He’d been reading for a long time, close to his self-imposed limit, and it had only gotten later since then. He wasn’t entirely uncomfortable where he was, and tomorrow was Sunday. If Charles was lazy on a Saturday, then he was truly hedonistic on a Sunday—he could tolerate waking up stiff and unrested if it eased that ache in Erik’s mind. “Do you still want me here tonight?”

Muscular dragon forelimbs curled around him protectively. “Yes,” Erik said, and Charles rolled his eyes again, but this time fondly, and also, just a little—sadly. How long had Erik been seeing the world in terms of kill-or-be-killed? Clearly there was no one else who tended to his wounds, and given his hesitation Charles doubted Erik had other friends, but what about his acquaintances? Colleagues? Did he _have_ a family, or did dragon society not work that way?

Charles rubbed at his face. “All right. I’ll do it tonight, but I need to change into something more suited for sleep.”

“ _Clothes_ ,” Erik grumbled derisively, but he opened his wings and allowed Charles to get up and pick his way out of the nest.

The light of the sitting room was searing after the dark, and Charles shielded his eyes with his hands as he hurried through it, back to the balcony, over the railing, and into his own flat. He went to his room and stripped down to briefs, then pulled a pair of boxers over those. Hesitating, he stood in his socks, gathering gooseflesh over his bare chest until he went digging through his closet to find a loose cotton shirt. Erik might scorn clothes, and he didn’t _seem_ to regard Charles in that way, but… just in case.

Charles brushed his teeth quickly, rinsed his mouth, and then stared at himself in the mirror. Erik liked him. Out of all the apparently detestable humans in the world, a dragon liked _him_. But _why_ —because of his talent for reading minds? Every other personal quality Charles had seemed best suited to driving other people away, but now a dragon coveted his company.

How fortunate, that something had come along and made him interesting.

He stared into his own eyes until he remembered that Erik would be wondering where he was, and then shook himself out of his daze. This time the shiver that went through him was not from fear. A dragon, waiting for him—how _marvelous_.

Charles went back to Erik’s flat, closing his own balcony door but leaving Erik’s open, as he seemed to prefer, despite the cold and the threat of rain. He turned off the lamp and felt his way back to Erik’s room, blinded once more from his time in the light.

There was a gentle nudge at his ankle—Erik’s tail again—and Charles followed its guidance until his toes found resistance. He sank down to his knees, felt for the curve of Erik’s flank, and stretched out next to him.

The wall of dragon behind him moved, about to wrap around him, but Charles halted Erik with a pat of his hand so that he could tug a pillow over for his head. Erik waited until Charles stopped squirming before he draped an arm over him and blanketed them both with his wing.

The membrane was soft against Charles’ skin, fine as thick suede, and as a dragon Erik smelled no different than he did when human—under the new odors of antiseptics and blood, the scent of cologne persisted.

Charles shifted around for a few last-minute adjustments and felt Erik’s belly scales rub on his back.

At this, some inconvenient part of Charles’ mind reminded him that Erik was probably a sexual creature; that Erik might have tried to give him the watches not to share but to… _share_.

Some inconvenient part of Charles’ mind might even have been all right with that.

Charles very sternly informed that part of his mind that he was _not interested_ and buried his nose into his pillow, which also smelled of Erik. He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to get a start on composing his next grant proposal.


	7. Chapter 7

29

 

Erik always woke when he needed to, and unfortunately this was not too much longer after he fell asleep. That same part of him that kept track of time also took care to wake him slowly, so that by the point where he might ordinarily stretch and roll over he knew instead that he could not, because there was a warm soft shape pressed into the curve of his body.

Lifting the corner of his wing, Erik drew back his head and looked beneath at the human curled there.

There was an emotion in his chest that wasn’t pain, though a few hours’ rest and Charles’ care hadn’t been enough to completely heal his wound. He probed that feeling carefully, eyes narrowed as he stared at where Charles’ eyelashes rested against the curve of his cheek, visible in the pale pre-dawn light.

It wasn’t anything so strong as fear or anger, and didn’t hurt like loss or bitterness. Shock, perhaps? Astonishment? Maybe, except there was nothing to be astonished by—he clearly remembered convincing Charles to stay with him the night before, and he would have noticed if Charles had tried to escape sometime during the night. The word didn’t quite fit within that unfamiliar shape of emotion.

That did not reduce the sheer _presence_ of the feeling when he looked at Charles’ sleeping form. His face was relaxed and trusting in oblivion, head cushioned on a pillow over Erik’s elbow. His hands were curled in front of his face, resting on Erik’s wrist, and his knees were not quite drawn up to his chest, allowing his spine to slope in a way that conformed to the shape of Erik’s body. Erik’s other arm lay over him, and he could feel those delicate ribs—bones he’d crushed easily in other humans—pushing against it in slow, steady rhythm.

Charles was not impressive like this, so much smaller when not in motion, intellect hidden away, but Erik found the sight of him… _soothing_ , somehow, in a way he hadn’t known he needed.

There was something terribly impersonal about being the wall someone rested against, however, given the size difference. Erik focused, winding in his extra mass as he transitioned to human shape and then— _stopped_ , because it was too early to concentrate on difficult things like tucking away his tail and wings and hind legs. Anyway, the air seemed cold enough to be unpleasant by human standards, so he kept his wing wrapped over Charles even while his chest, arms, and head transformed.

Like a sphinx, only not so annoyingly smug and _mammalian_.

With human proportions, it was easier to wrap his arm around Charles; easier to lean forward and put his nose into Charles’ hair and take in the musky animal smell of him, thoughtfully, because Erik wanted to know the chemical nature of him. _Just in case_ , he told himself—just in case he needed that knowledge later. To track him with, perhaps, though as a creature of the skies Erik was not gifted with an especially sensitive nose.

Slowly, carefully, Erik raised his hand to Charles’ hair and touched it, stroking a lock between his fingers. He’d felt hair before, of course— _he_ had hair, sometimes—but he’d assumed that the softness of it was limited to the clean draconic imitation. Now Erik reluctantly decided that maybe mammals weren’t entirely wrong in their choice of hair over scales. Not that hair was _better_ , of course—hair couldn’t deflect a blade or bolt—but he could see the appeal in it.

Erik rested his cheek on Charles’ head and moved his arm down again, raising his wing a little to make room, and then settled his hand on Charles’ flank. If he quit his human job he’d be able to stay—perhaps he might not even go back to sleep but continue to lie with Charles, staying awake so that he could maintain this more humanoid form, pressed closer than he could get as a dragon.

 

 

He slid his hand down to Charles’ stomach to pull him closer where the tilt of Charles’ hips leaned him away, and the muscles there flexed under his palm as Charles moved in his sleep. Erik went cautiously still as the body next to him squirmed, small noises of interrupted contentment escaping Charles’ throat. A hand felt along down his arm until fingers meshed with his own, and Erik lifted his head to see Charles’ lips part as he didn’t quite mumble in his sleep.

Charles curved back against him, which was good because that was what Erik had wanted in the first place—except that a moment later he pushed again, more experimentally, and _froze_. Charles’ fingers squeezed around his, presumably checking that they were, in fact, fingers, and upon confirmation that they _were_ Charles’ body went tense against Erik’s.

In an attempt to assure Charles that there was nothing to worry about, Erik lowered his head down again and rested his cheek against Charles’ hair, pulling his wing tight to exclude the cold air. Charles, however, did not relax again, and was silent for a while before croaking in a sleep-worn, too-quiet voice, “Erik… What are you doing?”

“I have to go into work soon,” he told Charles’ hair. Quitting was becoming an increasingly attractive option, however. After all, standing around looking intimidating to ease rich humans’ anxiety was hardly a good use of his talents, and it was only a disguise to make Erik Lehnsherr a more believable human. Then again… Rent payments. _Food_.

Work paid money, and without money it was hard to live in the city and not resort to breaking the silent laws, robbing humans of their treasures. That was precisely the sort of close association that had gotten the rest of his kind killed.

“No, I meant what are you doing with your _hand_.” Charles’ voice was tight, as were his fingers around Erik’s—tight enough to hurt, had Erik been human.

As it was, he merely frowned, and squeezed back. “Nothing.”

Charles swallowed, turning his head to peer back out of the corner of an eye, its pupil wide and black. He moistened his lips. “Then, if it’s all the same to you, could you move it elsewhere?”

Erik furrowed his eyebrows. He _liked_ where his hand was; the gut, after all, was the seat of emotion, and while he was nothing like a telepath—life would be so much more straightforward if he was—he could feel the heat of Charles through his thin shirt, buzzing _meaning_ against his hand, and did not want to move away.

Still, that was what Charles wanted, and Erik would not argue. He took his hand away and set it awkwardly atop his own hip. He breathed deeply, and looked again for that strange soothing emotion he’d felt before—but it was gone, leaving a queasy hurt in its place. He hated the weakness more than the pain, so he made himself large again, once more a dragon, and sat up from his pile of cushions.

Without the blanket of his wing, Charles curled in sudden cold before pulling pillows close to cover with Erik’s residual body heat. He twisted under them, squinting up at Erik. “How do you have _work_ now? Isn’t that a bit, mmm…” He pursed his lips, implying the quaintness, and he was right.

Erik snorted. “I have a flat, and I hunt down rare, expensive furniture to decorate it. I mixed you a martini and I smoke cigarettes, but it’s the fact that I have a _job_ that you find strange?”

Charles rolled over onto his back. “Well… Yes. Those things are all, conceivably, indulgences. I would have thought you’d consider work a waste of time. Unless it’s special dragon work…?”

Special dragon work, Erik wanted to say, only paid in stab wounds to the chest. Instead, he went with: “I have to pay the bills somehow. And yes, before you ask: I do have bills.”

“Oh.” Charles pulled a well-how-about-that face and tucked a cushion under his chin. “Where do you work?”

Erik scratched at the scales near his wound and stretched out his neck. “I told you: security.”

“I assumed you had lied,” Charles said, too matter-of-fact for Erik to take offense at the presumption. Looking along the length of Erik’s body, he added, “I should think you’d be paid handsomely, if they knew what quality of service they were getting.”

Erik fanned his wings out from his shoulders, presenting his body in what he thought must be an impressive profile, pocks of scars notwithstanding. “I should think they _do_. Humans who fancy themselves old money will pay extraordinarily foolish sums to anyone who can make them feel like they’re living last century.”

Charles looked like he might argue, but then he pushed his lips together and shrugged his eyebrows up, conceding the point. He held onto the pillow that lay over his chest and watched as Erik drew back fully into his human form and paced around to his closet. Charles’ eyes followed him but not, he noticed, looking at his face, so Erik tucked his chin down and saw the brown-black stain on his shirt.

There was no tear in the fabric—any physical matter Erik took with him into his natural form dissociated into energy, absorbed into his will—but real or not, dragon blood stained just as permanently as any other living creature’s. The shirt was ruined.

That was how it should be, though. Pain faded; eventually, memory faded—there should be some permanent mark left in the world, even if that mark was only a useless shirt.

“What happened last night?” Charles asked, his voice soft and gentle, as if he feared Erik might break if reminded too strongly.

Erik paused with his fingers pinched around the top button of his shirt, chin raised up, and flicked his eyes over. “I killed a man, and he defended himself.”

“So I gathered—but why?”

Erik stared mutely at him until Charles looked away.

Running his fingernails along the stitching of the pillow, avoiding his gaze, Charles asked, “Was it because of the watches?”

This surprised Erik into a smile, though not a happy one. “No. I… _had_ to do it.” He stopped, mouth hesitating open—but he said nothing more and instead began to unbutton his shirt.

He could feel that Charles watched him, but Erik didn’t look up. Charles had seemed sympathetic the night before, but now that Erik was walking and talking and appeared healthy again, how long could that sympathy last before Charles succumbed to suspicion? Erik had no desire to set him at ease—after all, it was perfectly true. The man with the iron sword had not sought Erik out; Erik had come to _him_ , had tried to murder him—eventually succeeded—and he could not explain his reasons in any way Charles would find satisfactory.

Charles didn’t demand those reasons, however, apparently understanding that Erik would not give them. This was good—it would save time spent arguing over _why_ Erik couldn’t tell him.

At least… not yet.

 _Not yet?_ Erik snorted derisively at himself, shrugging out of his shirt. Since when had he become so sure that Charles was the one?

He glanced over at Charles, who could not yet dip into a person’s thoughts without exhausting himself, and saw that the human’s eyes were once again on his chest. Erik followed his gaze, worried that maybe he’d slipped again and let some part of his wound show, but when he touched the skin around his collarbone it was not even sore. Even the dried blood had mostly flaked away. The wound was still there, of course, moved into his heart to join its fellows, but there was no trace of it on the surface—nothing for Charles to see, especially not in this dim light.

Erik looked back at Charles, who in turn looked quickly away. His face darkened red and Erik frowned. Why…?

But there was that emotion again: that strange buzzing, soothing, _alarming_ emotion he’d felt with his hand on Charles’ stomach, holding him close. Erik narrowed his eyes—what _was_ it?

Soothing as it was, he felt as if he stood exposed, vulnerable—as if the scars knotted into his will had been stretched out and revealed for judgment, after all. Someday soon, he knew, Charles would be capable of doing exactly that, but for _now_ …

Erik bundled his ruined shirt up into a little ball and tossed it into the closet, then reached in again to pick out trousers, a belt, jacket, and a new shirt. He turned his head and met bright but still sleepy eyes. “I’ll be getting ready. You can stay here as long as you want.”

Charles agreed, nestling deeper into the pillows, and Erik left for the bathroom.

Looking into the mirror, he was not surprised to see stubble.

 

30

 

Charles was grateful for the pillows he’d pulled over himself. They smelled of Erik, which was unfortunate, but their thick padding rescued his dignity better than sheets would have.

He stared blankly up at the ceiling as he listened to the sound of the shower—water falling in deeper patters from Erik’s false human skin—and used the palm of his hand to press the cushion down against his groin as if he could smother all of his natural instincts and live life sterile, a clean echoing place in his head where desire used to be.

He’d gone to sleep next to something he could talk himself into believing was essentially a beast, and had awaken tucked up against the warm body of what was definitely a _man_ , for all that Charles’ calves brushed against scaly knees and despite the soft wing wrapped over him.

His heart rate rose again, and Charles bit his lip, pressing down hard on the cushion. This line of thought was counter-productive; inevitably titillating but _important_ because this—waking up hip-to-hip, a warm hand spread possessive on his belly—was not something he could dismiss. Because Erik couldn’t possibly… _Could_ he?

Charles reminded himself again that Erik was a dragon and seemed to have different ideas about personal space, and he seemed to consider— _that_ , that nearness—too ordinary to be remarked upon.

But what else might he consider ordinary?

Charles rolled his eyes at himself and gave up on asphyxiating his arousal. Preparation was one thing—shameless speculation was quite another, especially when Erik had very recently killed another person. Charles liked Erik, relished Erik’s otherness, but he could not allow himself to forget that Erik had _killed_ someone. Even if he never intended to turn that against Charles, whether it had been deserved or not—death was horrific, and Erik’s hand in that complicated things far more than his species.

He found it much easier to ignore his lingering desire after that.

The shower went silent and Charles turned his head to listen. The tap was running—washing hands? Shaving, perhaps?

Evidently so, because after several minutes Erik returned smooth-faced and trim in a suit, hair wet and mussed. He hung in the doorway and looked in at Charles, examining him as if he hadn’t already memorized whatever there was to see.

“I’m sorry, I should have gotten up by now,” Charles said, though he continued to hide beneath the cushions. Seeing Erik in a suit and tie tempted him toward forgetfulness, but… _No_.

Erik shook his head. “Stay as long as you like,” he repeated. “My engagement is scheduled until two, but I don’t expect to have time for training later.”

Charles hated to ask, but not so much as he would hate not to. “Why not? If you… That is, if you don’t mind me asking.”

Erik had turned to go, but he paused, watching Charles from the corner of his eye. He smiled, though it didn’t reach that eye. “Special dragon work.”

“Oh.”

Erik turned away again, then looked back into the room. “Have a good day, Charles.”

“You too,” Charles said. “Stay safe?”

Nodding, Erik stepped out from the doorway. Charles waited, and a short while later he heard the sound of wings, heavy and broad, beating against the chill morning air. Of course Erik wouldn’t do something so ordinary as use public transit, but he really must have been feeling better after all, to use his wings so freely after his injury—at least, Charles hoped so.

 

31

 

Charles didn’t wait to leave. He was awake, and Erik was gone; there was no further point in staying.

He wished that he’d thought to bring his housecoat with him, however. At the very least because he’d forgotten that, lacking keys, he would have to scamper back over the balcony in his bedclothes. He’d done just that very thing last night, of course, but it seemed a lot less convenient once the sun was up.

 

32

 

Charles nursed a cup of cold coffee through the morning, busying himself with a new journal from the Paleontological Society rumored to contain a fascinating analysis of the _Homo erectus_ remains discovered in China the year prior. These rumors did not prove false, so he treated himself to a second cup of coffee, which also went cold.

Eventually he roused himself to take a shower and lunch. While he ate—though it was not quite two—he watched out over the skyline, trading for glances at his watch. Minute by minute, the hour hand swung over to meet the wedge of steel at two, then continued beyond. Charles fidgeted until half past, when he stood to lean by the balcony door. At three he sat again, but could not spare attention for his notes, a small worried frown perching unnoticed on his face.

At half three the phone rang and Charles sprang to answer. “Hello?”

“Oh good, you’re not dead.” Raven’s voice was dry, and Charles grimaced guiltily, pushing aside his disappointment for the time being.

“I’m sorry, Raven, I… was busy.”

The pitch of her voice rose alarmingly. “Oh yes, I remember the last time _I_ was too busy to call my brother and let him know I hadn’t been eaten alive by anything.”

Charles frowned. “But I haven’t—hang on, has that been a real concern for you all this time?”

Raven snorted indelicately. Traffic-sounds flowed beneath her words. “It’s always a concern when you’re quiet. I can defend myself, though. _You_ can’t yet, and also you have a creepy neighbor, remember?”

“He’s not creepy,” Charles said, distracted now by this newfound worry for his sister. She had always seemed more than capable of dealing with the usual threats of interested men and street trouble; it was a new and unwelcome sensation.

“Oh, really?” Raven asked, clearly not convinced. “Well, I’m off my shift and inviting myself over as soon as the tube allows, just so you know. Be ready to talk.”

Charles smiled at the base of the phone where it hung from the wall. “All right. See you soon.”

 

32

 

Charles waited, alternating between doodling around in his notebook and glancing at his watch, until he decided that it was probably safe to put the kettle on to boil. He was inevitably disappointed when it screeched at the heat and there came no simultaneous knock at his door.

He readied the pot anyway and had just begun to calculate how long _x_ volume of water at _y_ temperature might take to reach twenty-five degrees Celsius when, at last, Raven arrived.

Charles let her in and then went to check the tea. The steam condensed hot on his skin when he held the lid open and he felt a sort of petty satisfaction at his excellent timing.

“Glad to see that this hasn’t been enough to break your routine,” Raven said, leaning onto the counter next to him. She’d dropped the glamour the moment he closed the door, but her gloves and waitressing uniform remained. Against her blue skin the black and white looked false, costume-like, but then he supposed that was the truth of it.

“Of course it hasn’t,” Charles replied, pouring their tea. With other people Charles took it black, but in private he’d adopted Raven’s habit of using truly ridiculous quantities of milk and sugar. “What’s the alternative—utter chaos?”

“Your life _has_ just been turned upside down.” Raven accepted her cup, and Charles watched her test the temperature with her lip, wincing back before returning, more slowly. Was she like Erik, reacting to the idea of heat instead of the feeling? _Did_ she feel it, or was it a learned imitation of human behavior?

Charles scoffed. “I’ve turned into a telepath, not an invalid. My life as I knew it has been _expanded_ , not invalidated—there’s more for me to learn now, is all.”

Raven prodded at his ribs, and he didn’t dignify it with a glare. “Hmm. Trust you to look at it scientifically.”

“I am a scientist.”

“Oh, well that’s good, because I just picked that adverb out at random,” Raven said, and this time Charles was not above reaching out to swat at her head. She bared her teeth laughing, ducked the blow, and reached to tickle at his side again.

Charles cringed away and caught his tea as it lapped up the side of the cup, bending to suck it down to a more manageable depth. “Mm. But no: really, Raven, I’m fine.”

She examined him carefully with familiar, strange golden eyes, and she sounded as if she hadn’t expected to say, “Yeah. I think you are.” Then she set her elbows down onto the counter and watched as he leaned back by the sink. “Now, tell me about your neighbor. Is he treating you all right?”

Charles hesitated, curling his fingers around the smooth ceramic of his cup. The heat sank into his bones as he thought. “…He’s a hard teacher, but a fair one, I have to say.”

“Great, but you know that’s not what I meant.”

He sighed in defeat. “Erik’s made no attempt to harm me.”

Raven pushed forward on her elbows, tea steaming forgotten on the counter as she propped her chin on her hands, eyes narrowed. “Do you know that you _smell_ like him?”

“What?” Charles looked up, eyebrows furrowed. “But I—I’ve _showered_. Can you really…?”

“Yes, I can really,” Raven agreed, and then went straight to: “Oh my god, you didn’t deny it. Dare I ask?”

Heat spread across his cheeks and Charles knew better that to blame it on the steam from the tea. “I, uh—look, it’s really not…”

Her mouth gaped open. “Oh my _god_. You didn’t—tell me you didn’t sleep with him!”

Charles raised his hand to pinch at the bridge of his nose, hoping that it hid his blush. “Technically, yes, there was sleeping involved—”

One of Raven’s black-mitted hands flew up to cover her mouth. “ _Charles!_ You don’t even know what he _is!_ You really will have sex with anything, won’t you?”

Charles took his fingers from his face and flapped them at her. “No, no, there was no sex involved! I just—I slept _next_ to him, all right? He needed the company. And yes, actually, I _do_ know what he is.”

Raven tipped her chin up, dropping her hand back to the counter. “Well?”

Charles took a quick sip of tea, glancing out at the balcony again—still broken, and nothing in the sky but pigeons—then back to Raven. “He… made it clear to me that I wasn’t supposed to share that information.”

She frowned, pressing indigo lips together in disapproval. “That doesn’t exactly put my mind at ease.”

“I know, but that’s how it has to be,” Charles said, and arched an eyebrow. “If it’s any consolation, you were right—Erik _is_ dangerous. He’s also a _person_.”

“There are plenty of things that act like people, but aren’t,” Raven said, the scales between her eyebrows dimpling with concern.

Charles smiled to put her at ease. “I’m a telepath now, remember? I haven’t read deep into his mind yet, but I’ve… _felt_ it. He’s different, but not nearly so different that I’d call him a ‘thing.’”

She frowned, but nodded. “Okay. I’ll trust your judgment on that, but just—don’t get too comfortable, okay? Being a person isn’t the same as being good. Remember that.”

“I do,” Charles assured her. “Every moment, I do.”

 

33 

 

They agreed on a truce and, to celebrate, Charles explored his newly filled cupboards until he found a fresh pack of Jammie Dodgers. He offered them to Raven, and she peered slyly at him. “You know, it’s not much of a peace offering if I was the one who bought them for you in the first place.”

He drew them back and pulled one out for himself. “Oh, so you don’t want any, then?”

She snatched the pack from his grasp and glared at him as she crunched vengefully into a biscuit. “Jerk,” she muttered through a mouthful of crumbs.

Charles shrugged in a contented sort of way and waited for her to put down the Jammie Dodgers before quietly stealing them back to devour. “Armchair?” he offered, pointing with his teacup.

Raven went into the living room and sank down into the only chair with a grateful sigh while Charles re-filled his cup. When he joined her, he looked around by his feet and decided that if his books could be on the floor, then so could he.

The laugh Raven rewarded him with—fond and surprised as it was whenever he allowed himself to slip out from under his years and PhD in her presence—had not changed with her skin. Though glad of that, he hadn’t expected it to; she wasn’t like Erik, who seemed to shun human habit and who, for all of his secrecy, never disguised himself more than he needed to. It was easy to forget what she was, and where she had come from. Maybe, possibly, that was why he _had_ forgotten, all those years ago.

At the thought of Erik, he turned his head to look out the window again, and wondered if maybe he had simply used the front door for once. Stranger things had happened…

“Lost in thought?” Raven asked, her head tilted.

He inhaled deeply and looked back at her. He thought for a moment that he might tell her about his concerns, but he did not underestimate her intelligence; she might well guess that his concerns had wings, and that was too near to sharing the secret than he was comfortable with. “Yes, actually. I was wondering if you wore those gloves as protection against iron?”

She splayed her fingers over her lap and frowned at them. “Yeah, they—I can’t really avoid touching silverware at work, and of course it’s all steel, and who knows what else I have to touch each day.”

“And yet, last time you were…” Charles waggled his own fingers, and said, “Your clothing was glamour, too. Why not wear clothing all the time, like you are now? Wouldn’t it be safer?”

Raven bit her lip; a mirror of his own habitual expression, he realized. Or did he copy her…? “It’s just… It’s not what I _am_. We don’t _wear_ clothing. It’s just not something my kind does.”

He nodded, and then creased his eyebrows. “But the uniform?”

Her lips quirked up. “Personal exception. It’s harder to disguise when you accidentally brush up against iron in a crowded place like that.”

Charles frowned. “What happens when you touch iron?”

Her smile faded, and she looked back down at her hands. “It— _burns_. Iron absorbs magic, and magic is part of what I am.”

He was silent for a moment, thinking of every iron or steel thing he had ever owned, down to the watch on his wrist and the buckle of his belt. Had she ever winced away from him? Logically she must have at some point, but he hadn’t noticed. “I’m sorry.”

Her eyes creased up fondly. “It’s not your fault, Charles. This is a human world, now. There are still remote places I could live if I wanted to, but I want to be where I can keep an eye on _you_.” She leaned forward, folding herself double so that she could reach to prod at his shoulder.

He rubbed his hand where her finger had poked none-too-gently into his deltoid, and smiled ruefully. “Thank you for that.”

“Just consider it another thing you owe me for.”

Charles crunched into another biscuit and rolled his eyes dramatically.

 

34

 

He waited for Erik, and though Charles wanted to try going to the lab the next day he remained awake for longer than he really should have, straining his ears to no result.

When he went to bed he slept fitfully, and dreamt of men carrying swords.

 

35

 

“I haven’t seen you for a while!” Angel said that morning, slipping into stride next to Charles the moment he entered the park. He did not see her arrive, though he thought he’d heard a dragonfly’s buzzing a moment before. She wore the same clothes, still in black leather and lace, and he wondered whether it meant the same for a fairy to dress that way as it did for a human, and whether she even _had_ any other clothing.

“I haven’t been well,” Charles told her, linking his hands behind his back. It was unusually sunny that day, a welcome change from the dreary cold, and he held his head up, relishing the breeze through his hair.

Angel nodded sagely. “Sight sickness, yeah?” At his raised eyebrows, she added, “You know, when humans who have the Sight but have never used it before start Seeing for the first time—when something triggers them to start—they get sick for a while. You did look pretty out of it before.”

Charles blinked. “No, I was—I _did_ get sick, actually, but only for a night.”

She shrugged, and her wings flickered. “Lucky you.” Then she glanced over, quick and furtive. “So, are you psychic?”

Charles turned to look at her. “What?”

“Oh, you know—” she paused, circling her hand near her forehead— “Like those people who can read minds, or project emotions or see the future. That sort of thing.”

“Oh,” Charles said. He hesitated. “Yes, I knew that. Ah, yes, I am, I suppose.”

“Groovy.” Angel watched her feet as she walked; they were approaching the fence, which Charles now recognized as an iron border. Protection, or cage? “Yeah, I remember you having a hard time with the crowds. So, which one is it?”

Charles puzzled over what she meant for a moment before deciding she must mean, “The first one. That is, I can read minds.”

She nodded, seeming unsurprised. “Trying again today?”

“Yes, I’ve learned how to block out other people’s thoughts, at least partially.”

Her brown eyes considered him carefully. “I see. Find a mentor, did you?”

Charles frowned. “I did.”

She watched him a little longer, then nodded and turned her head forward again. They stopped; they had come once more to the boundary of the street. “Well, good luck then, Charles.”

He smiled. “Thank you, Angel.”

He stepped out onto the pavement, hesitated—just for a moment—and then continued walking.

 

36

 

Hank looked up at Charles, pushed his glasses up higher onto his nose, and looked again. “Professor! I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

Charles smiled, turning to one side so that he could peruse the folder affixed to the lab door as he spoke. “I wasn’t sure I’d make it in.”

Hank hesitated. “Are you… all right? Sir? Not to imply that you look unwell.”

The only papers in the folder were inter-department memos informing him of such useful things as a burst pipe in a neighboring wing and a dinner half-heartedly advertised by the physics faculty. “No, I’m quite all right, thank you. Say, have you taken anything out of here?”

Hank glanced up from his pipetting. “No, nothing.”

“Oh.” Charles abandoned the folder and stepped into the lab proper, looking around at the perfectly arranged test tube racks and reagent bottles. He’d been hoping for a reply to his newest request for a second lab assistant, but he knew better than to think that no news was good news. Really, Hank was worth five assistants, so it wasn’t a great loss, but in the end the boy still only had two hands. “Any astonishing new discoveries while I was away?”

“Ran the digest on your bonobo tissue.” Hank didn’t look up from his sample tray. “It’s in the negative eighty, if you wanted to do the honor.”

“Thank you, Hank,” Charles said, and went through to his office to fetch his lab coat and goggles.

 

37

 

As it turned out, sexual frustration had its advantages: the grant proposal Charles had composed in his head two nights before found its home on paper, written in sleek blue cursive with his nicest fountain pen. He noticed for the first time that the ink was the same glossy shade as his watch’s face, and he held his pen still, wrist tilted to compare—coincidence, or unconscious bias? If not for Erik’s watches Charles might not have noticed at all, but now he wondered. Did his aesthetic choices reveal more about himself than he’d thought? If so, then _what_?

There was a knock at his doorframe, and Charles looked up to see Hank leaning in, wearing that panicky expression he got when unexpectedly forced to be around people. If that weren’t enough, Charles could _feel_ their visitor—Hank himself was surprisingly quiet for a man with that much going on in his mind, but this other person was a flare in a dark field.

“That woman,” Hank said, glancing back into the lab. “She’s come back to see you.”

Charles sighed, and remembered—Hank had told her that Charles would be back on Monday, and sure enough, he _was_ back on Monday. How fortunate.

He capped the pen carefully and laid it down on his desk, rising to his feet. Had the department sent a rejection letter, he could have waved it around as proof that he could not possibly take another assistant, let alone one who’d never had class with him. As it was, he would simply have to be creative.

The caller stood just inside the lab door, peering around the lab with abstract curiosity. Charles took a quick survey of her—her auburn hair was cut sensibly chin length and beautifully brushed, but her makeup was reserved, as were the cuts of her suit and skirt. The heels of her shoes were flat and she carried a brown paper envelope in the crook of her arm, fastened shut with a figure eight of string.

Not here to impress, then, and judging by her relative lack of interest in his lab—not a scientist, either.

Then she met his eyes, and Angel’s voice spoke in his memory, telling him: _When you’re in on the secret, it’s easy to tell when other people are too_.

The woman arched her eyebrow at him, letting him know that she knew, as well. “Glad to see that you made it back from your trip, Professor.”

“Yes, well,” Charles said, inserting his hands into his trouser pockets. “I had so much waiting for me.”

“Indeed.” Her tone was pleasant enough, but when she turned her attention to Hank, the boy ducked his head down between his shoulders.

“I’ll just, uh, I need to go check on something,” Hank said, and gave the woman a wide berth as he fled, squeezing out along the wall through the door.

She turned her head to watch him go, and then looked back to Charles. She stepped forward, and held out her hand. “Silence Officer Moira MacTaggert.”

Charles extricated his hand from his trousers to shake hers. He frowned. “‘Silence Officer’…?”

“I’m an authority of the Silence, Professor Xavier. Our organization exists to keep people like you safe.” Officer MacTaggert gave him a wry, closed-lipped smile, clearly meant to be reassuring, but Charles’ frown deepened.

“How do you mean, exactly?”

Her smiled slipped away into cool professionalism. “I’m sure you know exactly how I mean. We’ve been watching you, Professor. We can help you.”

Charles swayed back a step. “Right, yes. Because help is so free where telepaths are concerned?”

Officer MacTaggert adjusted her grip on the envelope, drawing herself a little straighter. “There are few humans with the Sight who chose to do good for their own kind, and fewer who also have any magical ability. We would welcome the assistance, but the truth is, people like you are far less dangerous with proper training and supervision. It’s a good turn either way.”

“I’m already being trained.”

MacTaggert frowned. “I know. I also know by _whom_ , and I’m here to warn you: you’re in great danger, Professor. The man you call Erik Lehnsherr is not to be trusted.”

Raising his chin, Charles asked, “And what do you know about Erik?”

“I know what he is,” MacTaggert said. “I know that he’s trying to teach you, and that you like him. I also have a very compelling assessment of your personality suggesting that, if you’re actually as moral as you think you are, you’ll agree to help us once you know all the facts.”

Charles took another step backward, sliding his arms up to cross over his chest. “Your _personality assessment_ should also, I hope, tell you that I will be persuaded by nothing less than direct evidence. I won’t accept fear mongering as a valid argument.”

She did not appear discouraged. “Of course not; you’re a scientist. Anything less would be unprofessional.” MacTaggert took the envelope out from under her arm and handed it to Charles, who hefted it warily. He could feel that the paper inside was stacked thickly.

“What’s this?”

MacTaggert crossed her own arms now, and nodded toward the envelope. “Open it.”

Charles did so, unwinding the infinity of string until finally he could pull those stacked papers out and lay them on top. He scanned over them, pushing sheets aside to get at those below, lips pressed together and chin creased. “What am I looking at, Officer MacTaggert?”

“A list of victims,” she said, stepping close again. MacTaggert held her hands open and Charles gave the papers back to her. She shuffled through them, pointing with the smooth crescent of a fingernail. “Names of changelings and sorcerers, locations all around the greater London area, dates stretching back to the forties—you can see he’s been very prolific.”

There were indeed a lot of names. Charles looked away from them, to MacTaggert’s earnest face. “What makes you think that Erik was behind all of these?”

She offered the papers back to him, and Charles made no move to take them except that she pushed them gently, insistently into his arms and they might have fallen to the ground if he had not closed his fingers around them first. “They all follow the same pattern: the corpses were gruesomely mauled by a large predator and intentionally left for discovery; there were signs of window and roof entry; all targets were either active Silence members or suspected of being big names in the quiet city’s criminal network. In several instances, all through these years, witnesses reported a massive winged creature in the sky near the murders.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Charles muttered, staring down at the list of names.

“Doesn’t it?” MacTaggert asked, leaning forward. “What do you think, Professor? What do you _really_ know about Erik?”

He flicked his eyes back up to her. “I know that he’s killed, and I know that he’s dangerous—but he’s also my friend, and documentation doesn’t make something true.”

MacTaggert glanced down, lips pressed together, and then nodded. “All right. I won’t argue with you, just so long as you agree to at least consider what I said—and be careful.”

“Of course,” Charles said, and presented the records again.

She shook her head. “No, you keep it.”

Arching his brow, Charles asked, “What, do you think the sight of it on my kitchen counter will _guilt_ me into agreeing with you?”

Officer MacTaggert scoffed at the idea. “I wouldn’t insult you with the suggestion. Rather, I think you’re more than capable of looking those names up for yourself.”

Charles tipped the records against his chest. “I see.”

“Good to meet you, Professor Xavier,” she said, backing away. “I’ll see you again soon.”

At that, Officer MacTaggert turned to go, leaving Charles to tuck her papers back into their envelope.


	8. Chapter 8

38

 

The very first thing Erik did upon returning home was take a shower. It was enough to wash the stink and the blood away, but not the feeling of slime hiding in the chinks of his scales.

He much preferred waiting on the whims of rich humans to the work he did as a dragon.

After tugging on a pair of trousers, Erik stood in front of the mirror and stared at his human mask, touching it with his fingers. The stubble had not grown back, but he felt… _hollow_. Old; almost _mortal_. He combed through the short red-brown hair on his head, looking for silver hairs. There weren’t many, but they were too numerous to count and so he could only guess that their number had grown.

Dragons did not age, as such, but their wills could be chipped away to much the same effect.

He lowered his hands to the edge of the sink and leaned forward, peering into his own eyes. They were intimately familiar; Erik shed his identities like sheaths of skin over the years, but his false shape never changed except to gather wrinkles. He distanced himself from it now, trying to see himself as a human might, suddenly and uneasily aware of how _flat_ he looked; how smashed-in and soft and _strange_ his features were.

Erik touched the hollow of his cheek, fascinated by the yielding smoothness of his skin. This was what Charles felt like: no angles, no edges of scales—just smooth skin and soft hair.

There was a sudden knock at his door, and Erik pulled his fingers away from his face, tilting his head to listen and watching himself as he did it. Such a predatory motion, but that was good; prey _should_ know to fear him. Prey needed those cues.

The knock came again, quiet but stubborn, and Erik turned away from the mirror to go answer.

He leaned into the fisheye lens, spied the distorted shape of Charles in the hallway, and felt his face— _twinge_ , mimics of muscle and fat twisted into something like a smile. With a twist of the lock the door was open, and then Charles stood before him in the threshold, shifting his weight from foot to foot with his hands held behind his back.

Erik looked him over, taking stock of the reserved elegance of his suit, rumpled with use, and of Charles’ hair, falling out of its neat brush and down onto his forehead. It had been a long day for both of them, it seemed.

“You’re home,” Charles said, and his arms slid to his sides, revealing an envelope. He stepped forward, but Erik remained where he stood, and Charles swayed as if he might step back again. He did not, however, and his eyes dipped down from Erik’s face to his bare chest. The tip of a pink tongue swept furtive across Charles’ lips.

“I am. You went out today?” Erik asked, looking down at the top of Charles’ head until Charles jerked his eyes back up to Erik’s.

“Yes,” Charles said, but it came out in a croak, so he repeated himself. “Yes. I went to the lab. I thought I might as well try, if I wasn’t doing anything else.”

“You made it?” Now Erik did smile. “You learn much faster than I expected.”

At this, Charles arched an eyebrow. “Well, I did try to pay attention. Have you been back for long?”

With a quick shake of his head, Erik said, “No, I only just returned.”

Charles frowned. “Really? You were gone all night?”

“Yes.” Erik remembered again the sounds from the dark: the secretive rustling of low parasites, of illness and horror given motion, too insidious and subtle for even a dragon to fight against and kept at bay only by instinctive obedience to their shared master. “I would have preferred to sleep here, with you.”

Pink spread along the curve of Charles’ cheeks and, fascinated, Erik lifted his hand up to stroke that flushed skin with the pad of his thumb. The lashes of Charles’ eyes fluttered down and his breath shook on the exhale as he leaned into the touch, just a little bit—and then Erik stopped, uncertain, because he didn’t know what came next.

It turned out not to matter, because just then Charles opened his eyes, cleared his throat, and stepped away, clear of Erik’s touch. “I have to talk to you about something.”

Erik turned to go further into his flat, giving Charles room to enter and shut the door behind him. He took note of where Charles ran his fingernails under the flap of the envelope, the thinness of his lips, and the unhappy wrinkle of his chin. Prowling into the kitchen to find his Scotch, Erik asked, “What is it?”

“A woman came to talk to me in the lab today,” Charles said, and Erik made a noise like he was interested as he poured a few fingers of whiskey into a glass. “She told me that she was a Silence Officer.”

Erik paused with the glass raised halfway to his lips, shrugged, and took a drink. “It was only a matter of time before the Silence came for you.”

“She wanted me to join them.”

“Of course they did,” Erik said, with a huff of laughter.

Charles frowned at him, and came in to lean back against the island counter, his arms crossed around the envelope. “I refused her offer of training, I’ll have you know.”

Erik looked sidelong at him. “Should I be thankful?”

“I should think so. She had some very particular comments on your character.”

Shifting around so that he rested his hip against the cabinets, Erik mirrored Charles’ crossed arms, holding the Scotch up between his fingers. “Did she, now.”

Charles looked down at the envelope, unwound its string with a few circles of his wrist, and pulled out an assortment of papers. He presented them, but Erik kept his arms crossed, acknowledging them only with a quick flick of his eyes—enough to skim some of the words there and know that he didn’t need to see the rest.

The terrible uncertainty of a question appeared on Charles’ face, and Erik decided that he did not want to hear it asked. “It’s true.”

Charles drew the papers back slightly, toward his body. “What’s true?”

“You were going to ask if I killed those people,” Erik said, pointing his chin at the papers. “I did. I killed them, and probably more besides.”

Charles stared at him, human eyes wide and hands clutched around the list, then looked away to lay the stack down onto the counter next to him. “I knew they were real. I read through the public records before asking, but I thought…”

With a sharp shake of his head, Erik said, “No.”

There was a long silence as Charles simply _watched_ him, brow creased as thoughts flitted behind his eyes, and Erik narrowed his attention down to the whiskey in his hand, the deep amber swirl of it and the burn on his tongue. He did not want to see Charles’ face when he made the inevitable decision to leave.

“Why?” Charles asked, and Erik winced internally—he didn’t care to have this drawn out longer than necessary. “That’s a lot of effort to go through for no reason. _Why_ did you do it?”

“I have reasons,” Erik grumbled, and Charles made a sound of frustration.

“So you’ve said, but that—that’s the sort of excuse that you’d use for why you don’t drink tea, or don’t take cabs—not for if you _kill_ people. Especially not if you’ve been killing people for twenty years or more.”

Erik looked at him. “My reasons could get you killed.”

The crease in the center of Charles’ forehead deepened. “Why, would _you_ kill me?”

“I might have to, yes.”

Charles gaped at him, then snorted. “Right, of course, you’d _have_ to. You couldn’t just, oh, I don’t know, _not_ kill me? Especially considering that you were planning on asking my help for something you doubtlessly need me alive for?”

Erik shifted, standing taller even as he lounged against the cabinets. “I wouldn’t have the luxury of choosing.”

“Of course you do. You’re free to do whatever you want, aren’t you, so long as you don’t kill any humans who don’t already know about magic and fairies and dragons?”

Avoiding Charles’ searching eyes, Erik looked toward the wall. “I’m not free.”

“…Excuse me?” Charles asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

Moving his gaze down to his bare feet, Erik sighed, and tightened his arms around each other. “I’m not free, Charles. I would have nothing to do with your kind, if I had the option, let alone volunteer to run myself up against swords and spells night after night.”

Charles stared at him. “Then why? What’s forcing you to?”

Erik lifted his eyes to Charles’ and bared his teeth. “‘What’, indeed. I have a leash, and the hand at the other end relishes its secrecy.”

Charles nodded, wariness an unfamiliar expression on his face. “How do I know that I can trust you?”

Bowing his head, Erik studied his fingertips where they pressed flat against the Scotch glass, thinking. Then, finally, he brought the glass to his lips, drained the last of the whiskey, and set it back down to the countertop. He turned his head, looking past his shoulder to where Charles watched him still, and pushed away from the counter.

Whatever his human mask looked like, it was enough that Charles tried to back away. The island counter met the curve of his spine and he checked his balance with his hands before raising them up, as if to push Erik away as he loomed closer.

Catching Charles’ fingers in his own, Erik ducked his head and lifted them still higher, to press against either side of his face. Charles met his eyes, breathing light and fast. Nails scratched through Erik’s hair as fingers curled there, and Charles glanced down at the dusting of mammalian fuzz on Erik’s chest with furrowed brows. “What…?”

“Time for another lesson.” Erik held Charles’ hands tightly. They were warm and pliant in his grasp. “Go into my mind. See the truth for yourself.”

Charles looked up again, a new blush spreading over his cheeks. “I don’t… I don’t know how.”

“It’s easy,” Erik said, lowering his voice. “All you have to do is _see_. It’s just like any sense—your body knows how, even if you don’t. Focus.”

Those human eyes went wide. “I can’t—I don’t think I—”

Erik shushed him—a low, sibilant hiss that could have belonged to his natural form—and bent down to nudge his forehead into Charles’, letting go of his hands to hold Charles’ head against his own. If he could see nothing else, feel and smell nothing else but Erik, then maybe he would see _into_ him as well.

Charles moved as if to lower his own hands, hesitated, and then his fingers settled back onto Erik’s scalp. He stared, silent and questioning.

Inhaling deeply through his nose, Erik shut his eyes. “Focus,” he said again, only just loud enough for Charles to hear, and held the idea fixed in his mind, concentrating the anger and pain he suffered into one sick thought. It was immense; it was unbearable—but he tolerated it so that Charles might know.

Seconds ticked out in the watch by his ear.

Charles gasped, low and involuntarily, fingers spasming tight in Erik’s hair.

“ _God_.” He choked on the word, and every muscle in his body went rigid. “It hurts; Erik, it _hurts_ —”

Erik jerked away; Charles’ eyes were screwed shut, their lashes wet. His mouth strained in a grimace as a soft whimper escaped him. Fear flooded Erik—entirely his own emotion, he knew, because it appeared on Charles’ face only _after_ —and he slapped at Charles’ cheek. “Snap out of it!”

Charles sucked in a deep breath and opened his eyes, too blue against red as they stared wildly up at Erik. “I can feel your agony,” he said, voice high and astonished. “How can you—”

He groaned, eyelids slipping shut again, and Erik shook him sharply by the shoulders. Charles struggled for breath, bent bonelessly over the counter as Erik half-lay on top of him, and he didn’t stir when Erik reached into his suit and pinched his arm hard enough to bruise.

Erik paused, cradling Charles’ motionless body between his hands. He tried to raise the wall around his mind but could not; it was _gone_ , somehow, held open by some great and impenetrable _object_ that had lodged within him. Charles’ power was vast, and Erik could not protect him from himself.

He’d hurt Charles. He’d concentrated his misery into poison and then offered it to Charles for sampling. This was _his fault_.

Fury built within his chest and he wanted to roar, to grow back his wings and wrap Charles between them and wish him better, or to fly away as quickly as possible and hope he could fly far enough.

Instead Erik closed his eyes and exhaled, slowly.

He relaxed, calmed himself, and gradually Charles began to move, feebly and without direction. Erik watched him and very carefully didn’t feel relief, or concern, or anything at all until Charles blinked up at him, dazed but _there_ in a way he hadn’t been previously. The presence in his mind faded, and his defenses rose back into place.

“Oh,” Charles said, staring, trying blindly to reach his elbows down to the counter below, and though Erik still couldn’t quite think of what that strange painful emotion in his chest _was_ , he knew what it told him to do next.

“Oh,” Charles said again, softer, in Erik’s embrace—then lifted his own hands up to touch at the smooth skin of Erik’s back, tentatively, until he flattened his palms over Erik’s shoulderblades and pressed himself near, hiding his nose in the crook of Erik’s neck. “I’m sorry—”

Erik hissed sharply, tightening his arms around Charles, who fell silent again. Satisfied, Erik concentrated for a moment, and then wrapped his wings one over the other around Charles’ shoulders.

Eventually, Charles asked, “Is it really so bad, or was I just unprepared?”

This was not something Erik knew the answer to. It _was_ bad—more often than not it was bad, and the moments of respite were themselves painful in their simple contrast. He wasn’t driven to catatonia by the force of it, but then, he’d had time to adjust, hadn’t he?

“Just unprepared,” Erik said, rubbing his cheek on Charles’ hair. “Unprepared, and with more power than is good for you.”

Charles drew his head back against the elbow of Erik’s wing. “I believe you about the murders, but I can’t say that I’m relieved. What’s keeping you here? Why can’t you leave?”

Erik looked down at him, and decided that he could stand to tell Charles a few details, at least. “A ransom. If I don’t do what I’m told, it’s… forfeit.”

Frowning, Charles asked, “What could be so important to you, to warrant so much suffering?”

“It’s…” Erik hesitated, and then said, delicately, “…family-related.”

Charles considered, and then his eyes grew wide in realization. “You need me to find where this—this heirloom, or whatever it is—is being kept, so that you can take it and be free again. That’s why you need me; you could get it yourself, but you don’t know where it is.”

Tension drained from Erik’s shoulders. He nodded. “Yes.”

Charles pressed his lips together. “I’ll do it. I’ll help you, provided it’s within my power to do so.”

Erik smiled thinly. “I’m sure it will be.”

 

39

 

Charles found himself in the somewhat precarious position of drinking a martini while lying down, but Erik glared ominously whenever he tried to sit up. Evidently convinced that Charles’ small winces and groans were a sign that he was near death, Erik had brought a cushion from his nest to prop up Charles’ head and then, since he owned no blankets, had insisted on tucking his fluffy navy blue bathrobe tight around Charles’ torso and down over his legs.

Luckily, he didn’t seem to know anything about chicken soup; hence the martini, which was in Charles’ opinion an improvement. It wouldn’t cure the headache, but it might help him ignore it.

He tried not to think about Erik lying in that same spot just two nights prior, eyes vague and furious as Charles bandaged him, or about the dark brown stains like dropped coins on the carpet below.

Sitting in the armchair now, Erik seemed the picture of health. He was still shirtless, and had in fact actually lost his trousers as well when he’d shifted into a sort of half-form, everything below his waist melted into scales and tail. Though effectively nude, Erik sat with absolutely no self-consciousness, lounging with his knees parted and one clawed foot propped up on the coffee table. Patches of Erik’s scales and wing membranes were distorted around old scars, but there was no sign of a fresh wound. He appeared to be completely healed, but Charles began to suspect that appearances could lie, where dragons were concerned.

For his own part, Charles’ muscles ached in a sour sort of way, as they had once when he was younger and believed— _very_ briefly—that using a weight room might alleviate his solitude. Worse by far was his head; in addition to the waves of agony spinning loops around the confines of his skull, phantom emotions haunted his mind like the invisible clinging strands of spider webs. They didn’t feel like _his_ emotions, but his heart raced with them all the same, and concentration was a challenge.

And so, he returned to the grateful distraction of: _Erik is nude._

It wasn’t really an appropriate time for that sort of observation, perhaps, given that he’d just found out about two decades’ worth of murder and extortion and then passed out, but returning to consciousness in an attractive, shirtless man’s arms could capture anyone’s imagination. __

Erik hadn’t worn clothes when they’d slept together, of course, or any other time when he was fully dragon, but now instead of being a massive lizard he was very definitely a man with lizard qualities. The trail of hair leading from Erik’s navel might have faded into scales, but above that he was very human aside from the wings.

He held those wings out to either side of the armchair, their finger-bones curled where the membrane pulled up over the armrest and merged into his sides, reaching down along his thighs. Within that frame, Erik sipped at his martini with surreal nonchalance. Then again, this was Erik’s flat; these were his glasses, and his chairs. Why would he be anything _other_ than casual, in his own home and his own body?

Since Erik seemed occupied in staring at the wall, Charles allowed his gaze to drift inevitably downward, between those spread legs to the base of Erik’s tail. Rather than join to his hips in the same way that his legs did, the tail was instead a natural extension of his spine, central to his pelvis. Erik’s abdomen tapered down from his navel to anchor smoothly along the bottom of it—smoothly, but not seamlessly.

Though Erik had sacrificed his clothing for comfort, he had not given up his dignity. In fact, Charles had seen more through Erik’s trousers than he could see now, and if he had not just recently been in Erik’s mind he might have believed that dragons were sexless—but an echo of that, too, circled through Charles’ head, subtle and sure as the odor of musk, or the slide of loose pebbly skin over firm muscle. That dimple of overlapping scales at the base of Erik’s tale was not cosmetic.

Erik turned his head to check on Charles, who glanced away quickly before looking back again as if he hadn’t just been staring. He curved his lips into a smile, which Erik blinked at before turning his head to the side again.

Charles blew air out between his lips. Hugged and doted on one moment, ignored the next—what did Erik _want_?

It was just as well, perhaps, because it would be a shame to learn that simply being two mutually interested adults wasn’t enough. The fact that Erik appeared to have a cloaca was… _interesting_ , but Charles was amused to find that it wasn’t really discouraging. He wasn’t sure whether that was a commentary on male psychology, or something more sensible—after all, it wasn’t _that_ big of a difference, necessarily.

On the other hand, Erik could have barbs. Charles’ biological specialty lay in genetics and physical anthropology, but he knew enough about the reproductive habits of various animals to know that sexual compatibility was the exception, rather than the rule. Even the physical differences, however, could pale in comparison to the psychological.

Erik appeared to enjoy touching Charles, but it was just as likely _not_ sexual in nature. If it _was_ —how would Charles even know what to look for? What if Erik was waiting for a signal, either chemical or behavioral, that Charles could not supply? What if Erik just couldn’t _be_ with a male, or held to the very same taboos as mundane human society? Dragons might mate for seconds at a time, or join together for _hours_ , and either way one of them would be left frustrated.

For all he knew, of course, Erik could be looking for the dragon equivalent of breasts and arse. It was foolish to even _begin_ speculating on their compatibility when Charles didn’t even know whether Erik was capable of looking at him that way, but… Well, it seemed painfully unfair that Charles could be confronted with scales and claws and still ask himself these questions, and that Erik might _not_.

Frowning—maybe even pouting—Charles glared into his martini and wished for a scholarly journal he could consult, or a textbook on supernatural ecology he could page through. It would be far easier to stop lusting after Erik if he knew for sure that it was impossible.

Maybe there _was_ a journal…

“Are you all right?” Erik asked, and for the space of approximately half a second Charles considered telling the truth. During that time he imagined two scenarios: in the first Erik flared his wings, stood up, and walked just so far as he had to in order to sit down again, now straddling Charles’ hips; in the second Erik went dreadfully still and then ordered Charles to leave and never come back.

A third scenario chose that moment to present itself, and Charles found himself picturing, once again, what those claws might do to his corpse.

Not all that different from lusting after a human man, then, after all…

“Oh, I’m fine, my friend,” Charles said instead, and craned his neck awkwardly to sip at his martini. He made a noise of appreciation in his throat, hoping that Erik would learn to associate a steady supply of martinis with Charles’ happiness. “At any rate, I’m sure I’ll recover quickly. I’m more concerned about _you_ , really.”

Erik’s tail coiled uneasily on the carpet. “I’ll be fine when this is over.”

“Is that so?”

Those wings pulled in slightly, as if Erik felt tempted to hide behind them. “I… Yes. I’m sure I will be.”

Charles waited for a moment, sighed, and arched his eyebrow. “Are you certain? Is there anything I can do to help your, hm… mental state?”

Erik stared at him with something like surprise, then blinked and looked down. “No. I’m not like you, Charles—that is, like a human. The things in my head don’t go away when I think about something else.”

“…What do you mean?”

The muscles of Erik’s jaw worked beneath his cheek, and he lifted his eyes back to Charles’. “I _am_ my mental state. My body and mind are the same.”

Charles’ forehead creased, and he propped himself up on his elbow, ignoring the way Erik’s eyes narrowed in response to this almost-sitting-up. “You’ve also said that you’re not flesh and blood. What are you, then, exactly?”

Erik emptied his martini, then leaned forward to set the glass down on the table. He lowered his foot to the carpet and propped his elbows on his knees. “Very well; I’ll be your encyclopedia after all. To answer your question, I’m not a physical creature at all—I’m the _idea_ of a dragon, and because I believe very strongly in my existence, I exist. There is no distinction between my mind and my body.”

Charles nodded, and then considered. “So—when you get stabbed…?”

“Painful,” Erik said, his tone flat.

Lowering his eyes to Erik’s legs, to where the smooth lines of scales twisted unnaturally around grey knots of skin, Charles asked, “And the scars?”

Erik turned his head. His index finger traced a scar on his thigh and, quietly, he repeated: “…Painful. But, as you can see, definitely _scars_. They’re no immediate threat.”

“I see.” Charles rested his own martini glass against his bottom lip, and he noticed when Erik’s gaze dipped down to his mouth. “What would happen if you… _stopped_ believing in yourself? Ah, if you don’t mind me asking, of course.”

Raising his eyebrow in a politely amused sort of way, Erik asked in turn, “What happens if _you_ stop believing in yourself?”

Charles pursed his lips and shrugged with the shoulder he wasn’t supporting himself with. “Fair enough. So you’re… an embodiment, essentially, of the concept of a dragon?”

“No,” Erik said, with a sharp shake of his head. “The reality came before the name. If we embody anything, then you think of those things because that’s what we _are_.”

Charles hummed to himself. He supposed it made a sort of sense, and if there was magic involved then it might be the best answer he could get from Erik, but he couldn’t prevent his skepticism. It was entirely possible that Erik simply didn’t _know_ what he was made of. Before Newton’s observations, people used to think that white light was pure radiance from a divine source. Einstein’s famous equation taught that any sufficient quantity of energy could become matter—so what gave an _idea_ weight?

It really was too bad that there probably wasn’t a journal—at least, a _respectable_ journal—that would accept papers on that subject, since he had a specimen at hand. There were plenty of non-invasive tests he could preform with nothing more than light and observation. Even that, however, required consent, which Charles strongly suspected he would not get.

 

40

 

Charles woke that night and didn’t know where he was.

He struggled to sit up, found himself tangled in something soft but labyrinthine, and sought around with his hands until he realized that he’d only somehow managed to become _more_ entangled, and now his arms were bound up tight and he couldn’t see anything in the dark. He made a sound of frustration as he _pulled_ —

A weight settled onto his shoulder. “Calm down, Charles.”

So he went still, his breathing deep and steady while the hard curved backs of dragon talons brushed over the cotton of his dress shirt, their hooked points plucking and tugging at the bathrobe until he could slide his arms free again, which he did with relief.

He pushed the robe aside and swung his feet down to the ground, knees brushing scales. “Thank you, Erik,” he murmured, reaching out with his hand toward a darker shadow before him. His fingers splayed over a broad curve of muscle, and after a bit of exploration Charles determined that it was one of those massive pectorals that attached Erik’s wings, and that Erik was crouched facing him.

He frowned to himself. Wouldn’t the coffee table be in the way? Unless it had been moved…

Erik’s chest moved with his breath, and Charles squinted. “Don’t you need hands?” But that wasn’t quite the question he’d wanted to ask. He felt—gummed up, almost, in his mind. Napping had that effect on him.

Charles felt the heat of Erik’s cheek a moment before it came to rest against his own, nudging at his head gently. “This is what I am.”

Turning his face into the hinge of Erik’s jaw, Charles brought his hand up to tangle his fingers in the spikes of the opposite side. “It’s easier for you.”

Erik rumbled, and it sank into Charles’ bones. “Come to my room with me.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Charles said, closing his eyes. It was difficult to keep his balance without the aid of visual landmarks; he felt like he was very slowly falling to one side.

“Nonsense.” Erik’s tone was gentle as he took his head away, and now Charles did list down to his side—but then a broad hand braced under his armpit, and Charles held still while two sets of dragon fingers closed around him. Claws pricked at him through his shirt, but did not break skin.

Then Erik lifted him, silently, with not even the barest hint of effort, and used his nose as a third hand to support Charles’ legs as he gently—but clumsily—adjusted his grip, until he held a somewhat winded but sleepily fascinated Charles cradled against his chest. His eyes were certainly open _now_ , for whatever good that did him. “Are you actually carrying me to bed?”

“Mm,” Erik agreed, and the world swayed somewhat alarmingly to one side as he shuffled them an awkward step forward—he had four legs for a reason, after all. “You’ll be more comfortable there.”

Charles rested his head on the smooth scales of Erik’s chest, smiling to himself. He wasn’t sure that the words were comprehensible when he said, “Very considerate…” Still, Erik seemed to appreciate the sound of his mumbling, because he— _purred_ , almost, and that noise coming from a creature of Erik’s size and ferocity was unexpected enough that Charles laughed, quietly, as if by staying quiet he might slip sooner into his dreams.

Erik’s careful steps rocked them back and forth, and Charles had a vague awareness of the leathery scraping sound when they squeezed through the bedroom door. Then Erik was lowering him down to the ground, and Charles roused himself just long enough to reach out a hand and knee to help.

Charles waited until Erik lay down next to him and seemed to be settled in before worming his body in closer. Erik shifted a little, drawing back as if to look at him, and took Charles by surprise when he rolled over to lie instead on his side. Grabbing the corner of a pillow to drag with him, Charles scooted himself forward with shoulder and hip.

The broad chest before him was too large to put his arm around, so he curled his hands atop one another, knuckles brushing Erik’s belly scales along with Charles’ knees and forehead. He could hear Erik’s heart in slow, heavy beats, and it was hard to believe that Erik might not really have a heart at all when an arm that felt just as real and as structurally complicated as his own wrapped protectively over his shoulders.

Charles’ heart, for its part, chose that moment to stutter painfully, and he squeezed his eyes closed in a grimace. He ached, not with the sharp longing of desire but with the dull pain of certainty: this was a creature—a _person_ —who could never be within Charles’ arms, not in the least because he couldn’t reach.

Never mind that Erik _could_ be human, and _could_ fit between his arms if he chose. It probably warranted closer examination—why be so concerned with Erik’s natural form when it had been so long since Charles had slept with the same person more than twice?—but Charles, already half-submerged in sleep, slipped under entirely before he could answer himself.

 


	9. Chapter 9

41

 

Charles decided that his solution to this problem would be the same as his solution for any of the other problems he couldn’t fix through work: he would simply ignore his misplaced interest in Erik until it scabbed over beneath drink, women, and research.

This decision was greatly influenced by the moment when Charles woke up pressed against Erik and, after several contented minutes of feeling nothing but goodwill toward the world, he’d realized that Erik’s dragon body didn’t smell bad. Not only that, but his scent had not changed at _all_ during the night, because Erik didn’t _sweat_. Charles, meanwhile—he’d sniffed cautiously to check—reeked just as he did every morning.

From then on, Charles did his best to think about anything but the lumbering reptile he’d somehow secured as a friend.

He said his farewells to Erik and went back over the balcony to shower and eat. Before leaving his flat, he rummaged through the cupboards and got a small stack of Jammie Dodgers, which he wrapped up in a cloth napkin and carried along on his walk.

Charles worried that maybe Angel didn’t eat human food, or worse that she _did_ and would take offense at this small gift, but she squealed with glee at the sight of them.

“I love these things!” she said, lifting one between her glittery nails to examine the little heart at its center. “What possessed you to bring them? Are you sure they’re for me?”

More embarrassed than he had planned to be, Charles shuffled a little, hands clasped behind his back. He smiled. “Yes, they’re for you, though I’ll admit to being a bit of a glutton for them myself. Consider it an apology for having to put up with my bumbling over these past several days?”

Angel smirked. “If that’swhat they’re for then you owe me a _lot_ more biscuits, daddy-o.”

After that, Charles endeavored to have as normal a day as he could. In the lab, Hank snuck a few long, puzzled looks at him, but Charles did not feel the need to explain MacTaggert’s visit even enough to lie about it. Idly, he wondered what would happen if he _did_ tell Hank the truth, breaking the agreement to secrecy—this “quiet law” that seemed to be the quite literally unspoken rule.

He put those thoughts out of his mind and focused instead on his research. He was trying for a _normal_ day.

 

42

 

The idea of flight ran deeply in Erik’s kind, and in the air he felt as if his wings stretched on forever. The wind billowed beneath him, holding him plucked aloft like a dark and jagged kite against the milky night clouds, lit by the city below. He did not feel the cold.

He could go anywhere, and for a little while, he could even imagine that he was free.

The evening, thankfully, had been an easy one, as such things went—there had been no one to kill, or to track down in order to kill, and the last bleeding edges of the wound in his will finally had their chance to meet. Which was not to say he had been unoccupied—the only thing more impressive than a dragon was the ability to _control_ said dragon, but it wasn’t particularly exhaustive to lie on the floor and growl occasionally.

The slow beats of Erik’s wings took him to his building. Rather than swoop down to his balcony, he descended in a long, banking arc, peering into the windows he glided past. Charles’ were dark, the single dingy armchair empty, but Erik wasn’t surprised. It was late, after all, and he’d let Charles off the hook for training that evening, in light of both his trauma and his quick progression of talent.

It was only logical to protect Charles’ wellbeing, after all. Erik had confidence in Charles’ abilities, and despite his own impatience he was reasonable enough to see that it was in both of their interests for Charles to rest before continuing. In any event, keeping occupied might distract Charles from realizing that Erik could be ordered to kill more humans in the meantime—not, admittedly, a tragedy Erik could find it within himself to be overly bothered by, but one he could imagine Charles wanting to take immediate action to prevent, and Charles wasn’t ready for that just yet.

For now, however, the skies were open, and Erik had spent too long cooped indoors. He veered away from his flat and instead set out at a leisurely angle that eventually became south, back toward downtown London.

While it didn’t change his attitude toward humans, the light and noise of their domination had its own fascinating appeal. None of _these_ people had the Sight—let alone Sight on a level with Charles’—and so they could not have seen him even if they turned their faces up to the night sky as he passed. As far as they were concerned, however, their lives sprang up from the pavement and did not reach to the rooftops.

Erik flew on, over the river and its unsteady sparkle of boats, warning their locations with colored lights. He ducked low and sought, in vain, for the ripples of lurking sea serpents. It had been a long time since the reign of the harpoon, but even his most distant kin had not returned from their faraway hiding places—assuming they still lived at all.

He began to flap in earnest, pumping his wings until he could slip over the buildings crowding the shoreline, and from there he stayed low, barely high enough to avoid chimneys and the near-invisible television antennae that had sprung up in recent years. On a whim, Erik tipped one wing down and pivoted, leaving rows of narrow houses for a busier street, where cars and cabs wove and beeped their way past each other in front of well-lit storefronts and pubs.

Erik flared his wings, slowing to his absolute minimum speed as he scanned the ovals of hair and hats below, sure that there must be a reason— __

_There._

Erik dipped down to a roof, slowing himself bit by bit for a silent landing. He crept over to the edge and wrapped his talons around the gutter, craning his neck to peer down at the pavement directly below, where a head of dark, wavy hair stepped out of the pub Erik perched upon.

Charles was accompanied by a ginger-haired human woman, whose face—what he could see of it—made even less of an impression on Erik’s memory than her hair. They held hands, bumped shoulders, and Erik watched curiously as Charles leaned toward the woman and touched his lips to hers.

The word came easily enough— _kissing_ —but Erik knew little about human customs and understood less. He narrowed his eyes at the woman’s red hair and wished he’d paid more attention to the various instances of lip-touching that he’d observed between humans.

The pair parted and Charles walked away, hands resting deep in his coat pockets. Erik stalked after him, following the unbroken but uneven line of the rooftops, alternating between watching his footing and keeping track of Charles. This was something Erik was more familiar with, and he found he enjoyed it more when his prey wasn’t marked for death. He’d even started to plan where he might pounce down on Charles—and then the plea for help drifted up to his ears.

The plea was not, as he’d initially feared, called in Charles’ voice. In fact, Charles had frozen mid-stride, his head cocked toward one of those narrow crevices between the buildings that had once been a street up until the popularity of the automobile left it obscure. It was lit, but it was also empty, and turned sharply several meters in.

“ _Help me!_ ” the voice called again, and this time Erik heard the glamour in the words. He could not help but roll his eyes.

Sight-baiting was epidemic in the quiet city, because by definition the denizens of quiet could not reveal themselves to the greater part of London. The Sight, however, was not limited to seeing, and it was a common tactic among those desperate for human flesh to seek more legal prey by casting glamour over their voices. It was dangerous, because it revealed the caller’s own location to larger predators, and to the more powerful changelings of the Silence, who generally took issue with the practice.

On the pavement below, Charles—that kind fool—hesitated only a moment before he detoured into the alley, hurrying his pace, previously relaxed posture now tense and serious. Erik tracked him with his eyes, sighed, and followed. By any standard of decency, it would probably be better to stop Charles now, but… well, Erik wasn’t concerned about any creature low enough to resort to Sight-baiting. It would be interesting to see how Charles reacted.

Calm under pressure _was_ a job requirement, after all.

So Erik prowled along, keeping a sharp eye on Charles just to be safe. They turned the corner together, and the lighting grew dim and shadowed. Sure enough, there were two human-shaped figures lurking there, arranged in a tableau of violence. The taller of the two, his hunched shoulders shrouded in a baggy coat, loomed threateningly over a scrawnier man, who sprawled on the ground clutching a shapeless hat to his skull.

“Oh, please!” the scrawny man cried, his words dripping with glamour as he cringed away from the thug who stood over him. The shapeless hat turned beseechingly toward Charles, and the man reached out a hand, long fingers splayed wide. “Oh, please, sir—help me!”

Charles hesitated, and when the baggy-coated thug turned his attention toward him, he took a single step away before he stopped, wavered, and replaced his foot back where it had been. He held his ground.

Erik hunkered down on the roof, haunches tense in case he needed to leap down and end the charade, but having seen those two figures he was now certain that he could afford to wait. He wanted to see what Charles did next.

“I think you’d better stop whatever you’re doing and return to the street,” Charles said, his hands still in their pockets.

The man in the baggy coat stepped toward him, and Erik saw the exact moment when Charles realized that this was not a man at all. Trolls were known for their size and bulk of muscle, and even disguised under the coat it was clear that this was an exemplary specimen of the breed. More telling, however, were the eyes, which Charles had doubtlessly noticed were entirely black, as well as the mouth crowded full of crudely sharp teeth.

The troll’s voice was soft, almost gentled by the effort of containing his own violence. “And what would you do if I refused, little human?”

Charles blinked, composing himself until his eyes were not quite so wide. He gestured toward the man lying on the concrete, who watched them both with an arm guarding over his shapeless hat. “I do believe you’re breaking the law of silence, aren’t you?”

The troll shifted, but didn’t quite turn to follow Charles’ gesture. “Smart.”

“Not that smart,” the man in the shapeless hat remarked, rolling to his feet. He swept the hat from his head, revealing a pair of very pointed and very green ears. The goblin grinned, and sketched a little mocking bow toward Charles. “Surprise. And since _you’re_ clearly in the know, there’s nothing very illegal here at all, is there?”

 _Now_ Charles stepped back, though he raised his chin proudly high as he did so. Erik was very pleased to see that he wasn’t panicking, so far. “Well then. You called me here, apparently. What do you want?”

“Just a little chat,” the goblin assured him, bobbing a little closer on the balls of his bare feet. He spread his green hands palm-out in front of him to display just how weaponless they were. “Nothing that’ll hurt, I promise.”

Charles continued his slow retreat, eyes darting between the smiling goblin and the troll, who looked on with interest, flexing his clawed hands as he waited eagerly for Charles to run. “If you want to talk, you can clearly manage it while standing right where you are.”

The goblin stopped, tipping his fingers out in a sort of bashful shrug as he showed his teeth. “I could, yes, but see it isn’t _me_ who wants to talk to you. There’s someone who wants to see you, if you’d just come with us.”

Erik had been about to start his creep down the wall, but now he froze, listening, heart speeding in his chest.

With an arch of his eyebrow, Charles said, “That’s lovely, but if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not. If this person really wants to visit, they can ask for me at the front desk of the Kathleen Lonsdale Building on Gower Place during normal business hours, thank you very much.”

Chuckling to himself, the goblin lowered his hands. “Oh, no, he doesn’t make personal visits.”

Charles shook his head. The refuge of the corner was near. “Then I’m afraid I have to refuse. Tell your master I’m not accepting interviews at this time.”

The friendliness faded from the goblin’s face. “You can’t opt out of this one, changeling. You say whatever you want to the boss but _we’ll_ only take one answer.”

Charles allowed himself a little worried frown and glanced behind to judge the distance. As soon as he did so the goblin gathered his weight to leap; catching the movement from the corner of his eye, Charles sucked in a breath and darted his fingers up to press at his temple. The goblin stumbled and failed to jump, arms flailing to catch his balance.

Erik cursed silently to himself; impressive as Charles’ abilities were, this was _not_ the time to be showing them off. Still… the damage was done. By continuing to watch, he might learn more about what the pair had been sent to accomplish.

“No, no, stay right there,” Charles said, his voice high and strained as the goblin struggled to step forward, his green features sliding from shock into a particularly malicious curiosity.

Trolls, on the other hand, were infamously resistant to telepathy, and this one proved no exception when he waded forward, slow and implacable while Charles froze in place, staring in desperate concentration right up until the troll came close enough to snatch Charles’ fingers away from his face.

“Save up that fighting spirit for later, why don’t you?” the goblin said, stepping forward to join his monstrous companion. They exchanged nods, and the troll curled his clawed fingers around Charles’ arm, preparing to pull him in close.

Erik saw Charles’ nostrils flare as he inhaled, held it, and then all at once flung his weight away, wrenching his limb out from the troll’s grasp. Even from the roof, he heard the gasp of pain as those claws broke skin, and then the louder grunt of Charles’ fall.

He saw the red flash of Charles’ blood and rage welled up within him. He had waited too long.

All three of the alley’s occupants looked up at the sound of his growl. The goblin cowered, and the troll, sensing defeat, lost interest. Charles’ face lit up with a painful hope, as if Erik had just now come to save him rather than waiting and watching an event that he had every power to stop.

Erik swallowed the guilt, however, and crouched between his mantled wings, showing teeth as he hissed, “Go back to your burrows, gentlemen.”

 

 

The goblin recovered from his fear and crossed his arms over his scrawny chest. “Boss wants this one, Erik.”

“The boss can rot for all I care,” Erik said, leaning down into the space between the buildings. “I’m sick of the sight of you, Toad. And the _smell_.”

Toad remained right where he was, sniffing. “I don’t see that your wings are broken— _tonight_. Flutter on away and you can pretend you never had to see _or_ smell us here.”

Erik picked his forefeet up from the tiles and lowered himself into the alley, braced against the brick wall as he clung to the roof with his hind feet. When he had stretched down the length of his body, he pushed away from the wall and jumped the last story to the ground. He landed just behind Charles, who clambered back to his feet.

The troll—whom Erik knew vaguely as Sabertooth—watched Charles take shelter in Erik’s shadow with a faintly contemplative gleam to his black eyes. Erik dropped his wing between his body and Charles, blocking the human from his own sight in the vain hope that it might give the impression that they weren’t friendly with each other. Trolls were not half as stupid as the fairytales claimed.

Still, there were perfectly logical reasons for them to avoid this human in particular—reasons that didn’t involve their training, or their shared nest. “ _Fools_. It should be clear to you that this man has already been approached by the Silence. Take him now and it will only be a matter of time before they follow.”

The greed didn’t fade from Toad’s eyes, but it was joined by a calculating wariness. “He’s a telepath, Erik. Boss might take his chances. You know it’s only a matter of time anyway.”

“I think you’d best make sure, first,” Erik suggested, coldly.

“And then have to track this one down again?”

Erik shrugged his wing, and caught a glimpse of Charles staring at him in puzzlement behind it. “I’m sure you’ll manage, just as you knew where to find him tonight. Leave, or test my patience further.”

“Shaw won’t be happy about this,” Toad said, glowering, but he turned and walked away. Sabertooth lingered a moment longer, brandishing claws he clearly wanted to use, but in the end he, too, left. Strong though trolls were, they were no match for the might of a dragon.

Erik waited until they were gone and then whirled around to crowd near to Charles, nudging over his clothing with his snout, ignoring the hands that swatted at him in protest. “Charles, are you all right—”

“I’m fine, Erik, _I’m fine_ ,” Charles protested, and finally succeeded in pushing Erik’s head away. He stood poised on his feet, breathing heavily, and then collapsed back to lean on the grimy brick wall. He sighed, and he began to shiver as his forced calm left him, though his voice remained steady. “Who were they?”

Erik turned his head to look down the alley. There was no use avoiding the question _now_. If he’d interrupted sooner… well. No use now. “They work for my master. Voluntarily.”

“Shaw?” Charles guessed, and Erik cringed at the name.

“ _Softly_ ,” he cautioned, leaning his head in close. “…He introduced himself to me as Schmidt when we met. That should be safe enough.”

A wrinkle appeared between Charles’ eyebrows. “All right. So, he’s… what, a sort of supernatural Mafia boss?”

“A what?” Erik asked, distracted by the way Charles held his injured arm out from his side. The odor of blood pooled around them.

Charles stared at him incredulously. “A Mafia boss? You know, from Italy…?”

“That _troll_ ,” Erik hissed, flaring his wings and arching his neck. “He hurt you.”

“Oh, it’s…” Charles raised his arm in front of him, looking it over. “It’s not so bad, really. The coat got the worst of it.”

“Let me see,” Erik told him, and Charles tugged the torn black wool up, gathering the sleeve above the crook of his elbow as he held his pale wrist out for Erik’s examination. The coat was of a good enough quality that it had saved Charles from being mauled, but there were still four very distinctive red marks scratched into Charles’ skin, smeared with beads of seeping blood.

Lowering his nose down to Charles’ arm, Erik sniffed, and then curled out his tongue to lap over the scratches. He tasted the iron of mortal blood and the sharp tang of lymph fluid for just an instant before Charles jerked away with a squeaked, “ _Hey!_ ”

Erik looked up at Charles from his lower vantage point. “What?”

Charles stared back, wide-eyed and clutching his sleeve high around his forearm. He had already been pressed against the wall, but now seemed to be trying to climb up it using his back alone. “You _licked_ me. You’ve got my _blood_ on your _tongue_.”

“It doesn’t taste bad,” Erik said, trying to sound reassuring.

Charles’ stare didn’t end, but instead grew yet more bewildered. “It—no, I mean—that’s not the point! And, I must mention, not at all comforting.”

Erik drew his head up, affronted. “I’m hardly going to eatyou just because you don’t taste _bad_ , Charles. I don’t eat _everything_ that doesn’t taste bad.”

Unwrapping his fingers from his arm, Charles waved them at Erik, and then replaced them quickly as his sleeve fell back down his elbow. “Look, that—I’m not concerned about that. I’m more concerned about the part where you licked me and that’s hardly hygienic.”

Erik drew his wings in tight against his body. “It’s common sense. Wounds feel _better_ when you lick them.”

“Oh,” Charles said, faintly. “Well, thank you, but my point about hygiene still stands.”

Sniffing in delicate offense, Erik dipped his nose back down to hover near Charles’ arm. “I’m a dragon, remember. I can’t carry disease.” That said, he slid his tongue out again between the scales of his lips and drew the length of it along Charles’ skin.

“Erik…” The arm below him trembled, despite the hand steadying it, and Erik lifted his own forefoot to cradle Charles’ elbow gently.

He glanced up. “I could shift to human form, if it makes you feel better? Though…” Erik looked at the scratches. “…I wouldn’t be able to cover as much with my tongue.”

“ _No_ ,” Charles gasped. “God, no. Just… it’s nothing.”

“Mm.” Erik looked over the wound again, critically, and flashed out his tongue a few more times, but the blood seemed to have mostly coagulated. The odor was fading, swept away on an eddy of a breeze, to be replaced by more familiar pub smells, and also…

Erik’s nostrils widened as he sucked in breath, and he looked again at Charles’ face, and at his body, still pressed up against the wall where Erik had cornered him. He had a sudden awareness of the fragility of Charles’ elbow in his own much larger forefoot—Charles, who was recently-mated.

His wings flared, his back arched up, and Erik felt the beginnings of a low growl deep within his chest.

Erik choked it down uneasily, before Charles could hear. He sniffed again, to be sure, and felt resentful anger roiling in his throat. An aggressive response wasn’t unusual, in dragons—but it was usually restricted _only_ to dragons. Who had it been? The human woman at the pub, perhaps?

But Charles wasn’t competition, of course, and there was no one to compete _for_ anymore—just old dragon ghosts rattling at his ribcage. It was common knowledge among his kind that humans were typical mammals, rutting against each other almost from the moment they began to walk, giving little meaning or significance to the act.

In any event, Erik had given up his chance to keep Charles as his slave when they’d agreed to remain friends, so he really had nothing to say about Charles’ habits. If anything, he ought to congratulate Charles on his virility.

Instead his thoughts turned dark, and he wondered whether there might be some way he could blame the events of the evening on that woman, whoever she was.

 

43

 

Finally, though the scent of Charles’ musk still prickled like ants between Erik’s scales, he coaxed Charles away from the wall and convinced him to walk back through the alley to find somewhere a little less claustrophobic for Erik, who could not climb back up to the rooftops without causing significant property damage to the buildings below.

“I took the tube to get here,” Charles said, arms wrapped around himself. His sleeve was lowered back down to his wrist now, his injury hidden if not forgotten. “I wanted…” He chuckled to himself ruefully. “I wanted to see if I could handle all of those people at once, in such a crowded place. I’m… not sure that I can do it again, tonight.”

Erik walked behind Charles, both to give himself more space and because it was easier to keep his head level with the human’s. “Understandable. Your tolerance will become greater with time. I can take you back to your flat, if you like.”

Charles looked around at him, caught off guard. “I was going to take a cab.”

Rearranging his wings proudly over his back, Erik said, “It’s been an eventful night. I assure you, our building is much closer by air.”

Now Charles stopped entirely, turning to face Erik, who paused mid-step. “Oh. I didn’t think you meant—well, I’m not sure what I thought you meant, but… can you even fly with the extra weight?”

“I’ve done it before,” Erik said, casually, as if all of those prior experiences hadn’t involved humans who were decidedly less… _alive_.

“I see,” Charles said, with a consideration that slowly and visibly transformed to barely-contained glee. “You’re absolutely sure?”

Erik arched his neck proudly, showing off his spines, which in his opinion were very close to being properly straight and even—a little scuffed, maybe, but mostly straight, and approaching something like being even. “I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t.”

Charles’ face went dreamily blank behind his smile. “Flying on dragonback… Wow.”

In response, Erik crouched down until his chest scraped concrete, partially extended his wings, and held his forefoot up halfway above the ground to his shoulder. Charles stared, shifting his weight. “Should I… I don’t know, take off my shoes?”

Erik snorted. “You can’t hurt me, Charles.”

“Of course,” Charles agreed, but nonetheless was very careful when he supported his hands against Erik’s neck and wing, turning his head to check for Erik’s approval.

Erik didn’t have eyebrows that he could arch, but he tilted his head so that it might look as if he had. Charles nodded, moistened his lips with a flick of his tongue, and lifted one perfectly-polished Oxford shoe up onto the back of Erik’s forefoot, testing his weight gingerly. Finally, when Erik remained steady underneath him, Charles nodded again, took a deep breath, and scrambled up Erik’s side.

Charles half-lay across Erik’s neck for a shocked moment before he managed to drag his feet around, settling himself on Erik’s shoulders while studiously avoiding the wings to either side. He wrapped his fingers around one of the spines in front of him.

Erik stood carefully, finding that it was much harder to balance a squirming Charles on his back than he’d anticipated, and then craned his neck around to check on his passenger.

Charles stared up at him, a trifle bashfully. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how to sit; this is much different than riding a horse. Also, I think I’m sitting on one of your spines?” Indeed Charles was; Erik could feel where it was trapped under Charles’ thigh. The sensation was not unlike folding his ear forward in his human form: uncomfortable, but not intolerable.

Thoughtfully, Erik flexed his wings under Charles’ weight. His balance in the air would be centered more forward than he was used to, but he could adjust to that. “When I take off and land, can you lift yourself off of my shoulders? Try bracing your feet against the base of my neck.”

Still exercising far more care than a creature of his size really needed to, Charles found Erik’s collarbones with his shoes and pushed against them experimentally, clutching onto the spine in his hands in a way that made it clear he was imagining a long drop below. “I think so,” he said, sounding much less sure now.

Stretching his neck around, Erik touched the tip of his nose to Charles’ temple. “I won’t let you fall.”

Charles leaned in toward him, closing his eyes. His shoulders relaxed, and his grip loosened. “Thank you for that consideration,” he murmured.

If Erik could have smiled, he would have. An alternative occurred to him, and he moved his snout down a little, angling his head until the scales of his lips pressed against Charles’ cheek. Something like a human kiss, he supposed.

Sly amusement coiled deep in his chest, and Erik darted out the tips of his tongue. Charles made a noise of shocked protest and pulled away, reaching a hand up to his cheek to find that yes, it _was_ wet, and as Erik drew back to look forward again he could not help parting his teeth in a grin.

Erik walked down the alley with Charles on his back, and found that Charles actually managed to keep his own balance fairly effectively; horseback riding had trained him well, perhaps, or maybe he was naturally skilled at it. Either way, Erik privately decided that they must look rather dashing together, and lifted his feet a little higher as he walked, holding his neck in a proud arch.

After all, it was _Charles_ —not just some human who wanted a ride. On his back, Charles was right where Erik could keep track of him, and in the air they would be alone, cut free from the fabric of the city below. For a little while, at least, Charles might know what it was to be a dragon. It was the greatest gift left within Erik’s power to give, and it was the closest a human could ever really get to one of his kind.

They came to a street and Erik picked up his pace, heading toward a square of concrete in the center of the intersection ahead, but Charles tightened his grip with his knees and reached down to pat urgently at Erik’s neck.

Erik stopped, and looked back to see Charles’ eyes wide with alarm. “There are people out there!”

Glancing back out at the intersection, Erik saw that, yes, there were indeed people walking along the pavement, and cars on the street. He looked again at Charles. “They won’t be able to see us.”

“But what if someone out there has the Sight?” Charles asked, skeptical. “Would they… I don’t know, react badly somehow? Is that a concern?”

“You don’t realize just how rare a phenomenon that is,” Erik said, and began again to walk. “In any event, it takes a particularly observant changeling to see a dragon who doesn’t want to be seen.”

Charles shifted his weight on Erik’s shoulders, obviously checking the people around them. He grunted softly in defeat, no doubt seeing the way his fellow humans’ eyes slid blindly away. As Erik paused to wait for a car to pass, one pedestrian stepped out into the street to go around him; another stepped neatly over his tail, which he held low for exactly that reason. Neither appeared to notice that they had just gone out of their way for something that definitely wasn’t there, and in turn, no one seemed to notice that those two had detoured.

“Fascinating,” Charles commented. “How can they not see? How does that work?”

Erik hummed disinterestedly and crossed the street, ignoring the car that slowed to let him pass. “It’s part of the glamour. Not entirely unlike your telepathy, I think.”

“I wonder…” Charles’ voice had dropped to a nearly inarticulate mumble. “…Could I _make_ them see, if I wanted?”

Erik snapped his head around and hissed. “Don’t you _dare_.”

Charles schooled his expression into one of offended pride. “I wasn’t actually _going_ to. I was only thinking aloud.”

“Too loudly, in my opinion,” Erik grumbled, but he relaxed and looked forward again, positioning himself in the center of the square. He crouched onto his haunches and glanced back. More warmly, this time, he said, “Hold on, Charles.”

Eyes huge with equal parts terror and excitement, Charles nodded, and his shoes pressed against Erik’s chest as he pushed himself clear of Erik’s shoulders, his thighs gripped tight around Erik’s neck.

Satisfied, Erik pointed his nose to the sky. He crouched down even further, mantled his wings, and— _leaped_ , throwing himself like a dart into the air as he beat furiously against the extra weight. People in the street clutched their hats to their heads in the sudden wind, and somewhere blown far behind he heard Charles’ shout turn into a laugh, which Erik interpreted as a challenge to fly faster.

They rose above the buildings, and then still higher, until the gray-lit clouds above seemed close enough to touch and the silence wrapped around them both. Charles settled back down onto Erik’s shoulders as his wingbeats slowed, and Erik felt the brush of Charles’ coat as he leaned in low over Erik’s neck to hide from the cold wind. It was strange to have that extra weight before his wings, and it felt almost unsteady, but then Erik glanced back and saw Charles’ disheveled hair and his lips parted in wordless amazement as he peered around at London below.

The slight discomfort was worth that sight.

He spread his wings out wide, catching the breeze, and though he’d told Charles that it would be faster to fly home he succumbed to temptation and dipped gently to one side. After three years of living in the city, Erik was sure that Charles would be numb to walking past all of those famous tourist destinations—but now, far above the eye of any visiting tourist, Charles gasped and shifted his weight to one side. “That’s Westminster Palace! There’s the Abbey—oh, we could almost land on the roof, couldn’t we? Security wouldn’t be able to see us.”

Erik turned his head, showing his teeth in a savage draconic grin. “Would you like me to?” It would be tiring to land and take off again, and the spiked roof made him uneasy, but… he would do it, if Charles asked. Security probably _would_ be able to see them—the two sides of London did intersect at some points—but it might be entertaining to test their vigilance.

Charles blinked at him, dislodging tears pricked up by the wind, and then was distracted again by the view. “…Not tonight, I think, if it’s all the same to you.”

So Erik flew on, drifting between his favorite views. He did not speak to point them out to Charles, but could feel the human’s amazement as tangibly as if it were his own. Where telepaths were concerned, it was a real possibility—but this, he thought, was something both more ordinary and more remarkable. It felt, in a strange and curious way, like being home.

It wasn’t long, however, before Charles began to press closer, and Erik could feel his shivering even through the coat and his own thick scales. It was cold in the sky, and they were not so similar after all.

Erik took them on a long, gliding descent back to their building, just barely visible in the distant sodium haze. He hadn’t lied about the superior speed of flying, and soon he was flapping to land on his balcony, Charles adjusting wearily to give him room to do so. Landing with a passenger was harder than taking off with one, especially in such a narrow space, but Erik managed and Charles’ terrified grip proved insufficient to strangle him.

Heading straight for the couch to kneel down next to it, Erik held very still as Charles peeled himself off from around his shoulders, depositing his stiff body onto the cushions with a grace that appeared to leave him somewhat short of breath.

Erik looked at him, head tilted. “Well?”

Charles, sprawled out across half the couch, ran his fingers through wind-tousled hair and puffed air out through his cheeks. “That’s… good. It was amazing. Incredible, really. Cold, and more than a little frightening, but _incredible_.”

Indeed, Charles was still shivering, even indoors and in his black wool coat. Erik gathered up his will until he was human-shaped again and left to seek around the dark walls of his bathroom. He returned with his robe, and Charles met his eyes in silent gratitude as he took it and gathered it around himself.

Erik returned the smile with a curve of his own lips, and looked Charles over. He’d been drinking already, and Erik had some notion that drinking too much in one go was somehow bad for humans, but surely enough time had passed by now. Alcohol might do Charles some good, he decided. “Scotch?”

“Mm,” Charles grunted, closing his eyes and burrowing further into the bathrobe. “Please.”

Erik went to the kitchen, pausing now and then to glance up and check on Charles, though he wasn’t sure what could possibly go wrong. Then again, who knew where humans were concerned?

Charles’ eyelids were shut, but when Erik approached with a glass in each hand he opened them again, slowly, and smiled. Erik hesitated at the sight of him; there was a strange feeling in his chest, warm but… fraudulent, somehow, as if he’d stumbled into somewhere he wasn’t sure he should be.

Which was ridiculous, because he was in his own home, with his own friend.

Erik handed one of the whiskeys to Charles, who thanked him almost in a purr as he sipped. The other he kept for himself, and once seated, he looked back at Charles again: he wasn’t shivering so much anymore but he was obviously still cold, rosy-cheeked and wrapped up tightly in the robe.

Erik held the Scotch well away from himself as he reached his other hand around Charles’ shoulders to grab at his far elbow. With a heave of his arm, Erik pulled him close. Charles allowed this, looking up at Erik through his eyelashes as he rested the glass against his bottom lip, and a moment later Charles relaxed into the curve of Erik’s body and looked away again.

Erik kept his arm around Charles, liking the way their contours matched together, and went back to his drink in what he thought was a companionable silence.

“You saved me tonight,” Charles said, his voice soft. Erik looked down at him, but Charles didn’t turn to meet his gaze, which was really just as well.

Erik tightened his grip around Charles’ shoulders. “How’s your arm?”

Charles shifted, freeing his arm from the robe and carefully peeling the coat sleeve back from his wrist. The scratches beneath were dried hard but the skin surrounding them was red with swelling, oddly hot under Erik’s gently probing fingers. He frowned. “You’d best keep an eye on that. I can’t vouch for troll hygiene.”

Looking back up at him with a wry little smile, Charles said, “I’m a biologist, Erik. I think we might have covered bacterial infections sometime in my very first year of schooling.”

Erik took his fingers away from Charles’ arm, pausing to tug the coat sleeve back down again. “Of course. Relatedly, I’d like to mention that I had only just hatched when your science decided to accept this germ theory of disease you follow.”

“Well, forgive me for taking into account the more than sixty years that have passed since then,” Charles said, elbowing Erik’s side gently.

Erik raised his eyebrow. “If I must.”

Charles twisted farther, peering at him. “Are you really so old? You look relatively young.”

Blunt fingers reached up to smooth the creases in Erik’s forehead, and he tolerated the prodding. “I should look younger, actually. We age as we lose parts of ourselves.”

The frown on Charles’ face was not only from concentration as his fingers traveled down to the hollow of Erik’s cheek. “That’s actually very horrifying,” he murmured, and traced his fingertips over to the wrinkle by Erik’s nose. “In the stories I read when I was a child, immortality was always depicted with young, beautiful people, untouched by time. Not that you aren’t handsome, of course, but you look like you should, oh… have an age, I suppose.”

Erik held his gaze unblinkingly. Charles’ fingertips were on his lips, brushing along their curves, and it made talking somewhat inconvenient. Still, he tried. “It’s purely symbolic in this shape. You’ll have to take my word for it that as a dragon I look neither young nor old.”

“Mm,” Charles commented, and took his hand away from Erik’s chin. “I’m actually very warm now. Help me out of my coat, would you?” Then he motioned for Erik to wait as he remembered the whiskey in his hand. He drank the last of it, grimaced, and looked around for somewhere to set it until Erik took it from him and leaned forward to set both of their glasses on the coffee table.

Charles’ body exuded heat as Erik slipped his hands under the edges of the coat, and in short order he’d managed to peel both it and the jacket beneath off and drape them over the back of the couch. Erik might have removed the vest, too, but then Charles flopped back against him and made himself comfortable on Erik’s customary turtleneck, his head nestled in the crook of Erik’s shoulder.

Looking down in bemusement, Erik noticed for the first time that he could see a good way down the front of Charles’ shirt, which was odd given Charles’ usual neatness. He reached up with the arm pinned behind Charles, catching the free second button between his fingers. It must have been unbuttoned earlier in the night, he thought, perhaps when—

The scent had been working its way into Erik’s nose ever since the suit jacket had come off, but now his attention latched onto it and he swallowed distractedly. Of course; the shirt would have been unbuttoned when Charles had mated with that woman.

But now Charles was moving again, turning in Erik’s grasp until they faced each other. His eyes were really amazingly blue, and, mesmerized, Erik lifted his hand to brush the hair from Charles’ forehead. Charles mirrored the gesture, almost, except that his hand went to the back of Erik’s head, gently guiding him down until they were very close indeed.

Erik hardly drew breath. Alarm fluttered between his ribs but he didn’t dare move lest he interrupt, because whatever Charles was doing, it was _Charles_ , and Charles could not possibly hurt him.

Those blue eyes dipped down, and Erik wondered if he had failed somehow—except then Charles tilted his face up that last little distance and touched their lips together, softly, more air even than touch while his fingertips fidgeted on the back of Erik’s head and their noses glanced together.

 _Oh_. It was kissing; it was that human thing he’d seen so many times before, and had never really been curious about until he’d landed on the roof of that pub.

Erik relaxed, then, and Charles firmed his grip on Erik’s head to pull him in closer. The point of his nose pressed in against Charles’ cheek and his hands were lost on Charles’ waist. The heady scents of alcohol, cologne, sweat, and musk closed in a cage around his thoughts and Erik could still not even begin to explain what kissing _was_ except that it was definitely much more interesting now than it had ever been before and it was not at all unpleasant to do.

The tip of Charles’ tongue traced over his lip where Charles’ fingers had been earlier, and it was— _ticklish_ , almost, except not really, and when Erik’s mouth startled open Charles took the opportunity to lick deep inside. It was oddly hypocritical, that Charles would object to Erik licking his arm and then do _this_ , but Erik had no such objections and so held his jaws obligingly open, trying to hold still for Charles except that there was that bizarre not-ticklish sensation again, driving him to _move_.

In part to see how Charles would react, Erik chased Charles’ tongue back into his mouth and wasn’t sure what to do when Charles arched against him. He settled for supporting Charles’ back with his hands as he tried to mimic what the human had done to him. There was a first, bewildering taste of cherry at his lips, and then more familiar Scotch and human tastes, fascinating from this angle but not quite so intriguing as the noises Charles made while he tasted them—all of those little hums he made when he drank the martinis Erik mixed for him, joined by gasps and moans Erik had never heard before but decided, after some experimentation, that he liked.

He clutched Charles closer, intent on a thorough exploration of these hitherto-unknown human traits, but soon Charles wriggled out of his grasp with an astonishing expertise, twitching the bathrobe to the floor as he swung his leg up over both of Erik’s and shifted his weight to kneel there, straddling Erik’s lap.

Erik made his own sound, something he thought should convey how much less convenient it was to crane this short human neck up to meet Charles’ lips, but then Charles settled down onto his lap and Erik put his hands on the ridge of Charles’ pelvis to anchor him there. _This_ was better, and Charles could press himself near well enough on his own with just one hand, leaving the other free to slip under Erik’s turtleneck, which was good because Erik was actually very warm for the first time in a long time, and he was sure that the last time had actually involved _fire_ —

Charles shifted his hips under Erik’s hands, and Erik drew back from the kissing. His eyes were slow to open, but when they did, he saw Charles’ pale throat presented before him. He leaned forward, unable to resist the offer, and licked the salt from Charles’ skin as he rolled his own hips up experimentally.

It was hard to think with Charles gasping on top of him, the scent of Charles’ earlier activities stronger than ever around them, but— _yes_ , that was a very odd location for something that shape. _Unless_ … Erik frowned against Charles’ neck, trying to remember his own anatomy in human form. But that couldn’t be right, unless…

Erik froze, his hands squeezing tight around Charles’ hips, and Charles gave a soft whimper of discomfort. A moment later Charles opened his eyes to protest more directly; when he saw Erik’s expression, however, the pink fled from his cheeks.

“Oh, god,” Charles said, reaching up to hold Erik’s face gently. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“This is.” Erik swallowed thickly, his throat—his damnable, fake, shouldn’t-have-physical-responses throat—suddenly and absolutely dry. “This is sex.” The odor of Charles’ mating, he realized, was not from earlier—it was from _this_ ; this thing they’d been doing together, that Erik should have _known_ but didn’t, because he never felt tempted to watch when he flew by open windows.

Charles looked down at them both, and tried to smile with lips that had at some point in the evening turned a bright, abused-looking shade of red. “Well, it’s generally the prelude to sex, yes. Was it… bad?”

Erik’s laugh was bitter, because that was the irony of it: for all of his ignorance, his false body had played along. Charles wasn’t the only one with a bulging trouser placket. “It’s not a matter of good or bad, Charles, it—we _can’t_. We can’t!”

Charles frowned, and Erik let him slip out of his grasp to sit next to him, instead, a discrete distance away. He crossed his legs, and then fidgeted with his hands for a while, making several abortive motions to reach out to Erik’s shoulder before he eventually locked them tightly around each other on top of his thigh. He shook a curl of hair out of his face and regarded Erik seriously. “What do you mean, ‘we can’t’? Is it… Is it because we’re both men?”

“No,” Erik scoffed, looking away. The whiskey glasses on the table—one half-emptied, one dry—caught his eye, and he hooked his bare toes on the edge of the wood next to them. “Well, yes. You’re a man—a _human_. We’re too different.”

“I see,” Charles said, softly. “There’s no way that we could… try to make it work?”

Erik glanced back to him, unsmiling. “We can’t. Charles—dragons mate for life.”

Charles stared at him. “ _Really_. Wow, that’s… I didn’t know, Erik. I’m sorry.”

Looking away again, Erik said, “It’s alright. You’re mortal; I’d outlive you anyway.” A nagging part of his mind pointed out that this wasn’t strictly true, given the decades—if not centuries—Schmidt’s control had shaved from his life, and the tendency of changelings to live longer when exposed to magic.

He chose to ignore that voice, as well as the one that chimed in to add that he certainly wasn’t getting any younger, and that a telepath could probably handle the mental strain of the bond better than any other human. Charles would be happier, free of him—free to pursue any mate he wanted, at any time.

There was silence, for a moment, until Charles broke it. “It’s not a choice, at all?”

Erik drew his upper lip back from his teeth and hissed. In a flash, he was off the couch and on four legs, back in his natural form. He was grateful to find that he was no longer showing his sex, or—due to the rigidness of his face—his emotions. His _weakness_ , worn into him by the inexorable weariness of time.

He looked back to where Charles curled into the corner of the couch, revealing no sign of fear despite his soft, mobile features. “No. No, it’s not. Not for either party, whether they want to or not.”

“So does that mean that you’re,” Charles began, and swept his tongue across his red lips, quick with guilt at the memory of Erik there. “Are you a… virgin?”

Erik stared, motionless. “No.”

“Oh.” Charles frowned in puzzlement, and then his eyes widened in realization. “ _Oh_. Oh, Erik, I’m so sorry.”

Erik glanced down at the glasses again, but couldn’t bring himself to shift into human form and clean them up. Instead he stalked to his room, pausing at the door to say, without turning his head, “I think you’d best leave now, Charles. Go back to your flat. Go back to your women, or your men, if that pleases you.”

He slipped into the darkness of his room to lie down atop his pile of cushions, coiled tight with his head tucked under his wing. His scales itched for touch but he didn’t move, listening until, a few moments later, he heard Charles slide off the couch. Glasses clinked and the kitchen sink ran water.

Then there was the scuff of Charles’ shoes on the balcony tiles and, shortly after that, the distant noise of a glass door sliding open and shut.

The silence that followed was nearly absolute but for the sigh of early-morning cars on the streets outside, the susurration of his heart, and the drag of his breath. The dark pressed against his open eyes like a living thing.

“Go back to your own kind,” Erik rasped to himself. “Go back to your own kind, and leave me alone.”

Except that he needed Charles, still—no matter how much he reminded Erik of his loneliness.


	10. Chapter 10

44

 

Charles dragged himself out of bed and went into the kitchen, where he stared at his cabinets without any comprehension. Eventually, he remembered how to make tea, and did so. His stomach churned faintly at the idea, but he scraped some butter onto hot toast and made himself eat at least until his teacup was empty again.

He showered quickly, was unable to find a temperature that wasn’t either too hot or too cold, and finally stumbled blinking down the stairs at the front of his building, wearing his second-best coat. He was shocked to find that the world seemed to be progressing just fine in his absence.

Charles followed his usual morning route purely by instinct until he came to the park, where he jumped at the sudden appearance of Angel by his elbow.

“Oh, Charlie, you don’t look so good,” she said, leaning in close.

Charles squinted at her. Angel’s thoughts clamored in his head, stuck there like a broken radio knob, and they were bright and bewildering through his own fog. “Late night.”

Angel nodded knowingly, her eyes earnestly wide. “Spent the night around town? Didn’t see you come back through here.” This was what she said—in Charles’ mind, however, he saw her expression turn distraught; heard her say: _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told them, but they keep me safe; I like you, but they keep me safe_.

“’S okay,” Charles mumbled, reaching out to pat her shoulder. “I understand, darling.”

Angel’s sculpted eyebrows furrowed in confusion, then smoothed out as her confusion dawned into horrified realization. She stood frozen to the spot as Charles continued on, through her rented park and past the fence, where the flow of thoughts broke over him in a wave. He didn’t push them back, but neither did he sink; instead he drifted among them, weaving through emotion and memory without quite touching. It was comforting, in its way—as if, despite all of his differences, he could never quite be alone.

It was a cold and borrowed comfort, of course. He could take their simple enjoyment of what they’d had for breakfast, their loves and hellos and goodbyes and even their boredom and weariness, but it brought him no closer to any of their lives. He was nothing more than an intimately acquainted stranger.

He found that he was content with being a stranger. It was less effort.

When Charles eventually made it into the lab, Hank—who was sitting at his favorite section of bench as always, who had managed to be the first to open the lab _as always_ , and who, as far as Charles knew, never actually _left_ the lab except for coffee—peered over at him through his horn-rimmed glasses, alarmed. “Professor, you don’t look so good. Are you sure you should be working today?”

Charles waved his hand and grumbled something meant to sound reassuring, then shut himself into his office. He tugged his personal telephone from its hook, told the front desk where to direct his call, and listened to the ringing at the other end with an intent and unusual fascination. He recorded a message, and having accomplished that much at least, crossed his arms over the papers on his desk and settled his head into the crook of his elbow.

 

45

 

Charles jerked awake, utterly lost until he felt the drool soaking into his shirtsleeve. He’d fallen asleep at his desk.

Pushing himself upright, Charles lifted his hands to cover his face and pressed hard, rubbing sensation back into eyelids and cheeks. He felt strangely lethargic, as if he’d been drugged, but that was the same reason why he usually avoided naps. It was probably too much to hope that Hank hadn’t seen him.

After a few minutes spent trying to look more alert, Charles opened his door again and crept out into the lab.

Charles peered at Hank’s bench space, hoping to judge the elapsed time by the status of Hank’s work. Several seconds ticked by until Charles realized that he had no recollection of what Hank had been doing when he first came in, anyway, and by then it was too late because Hank caught him staring.

“Would you like some coffee, Professor?” Hank’s offer was almost casual, but there was a particular note of gentleness that made Charles wince.

“Oh, did you see, then?” he asked, gesturing back at his office.

Hank shifted uncomfortably. “I felt obliged to check on you.”

Charles grunted, and lifted himself up onto a stool. He’d been asleep long enough to go stiff. “Thank you. I’ll take that coffee, whenever you go by the lounge.”

“No problem,” Hank said, and because he was so accursedly tall he did not need to slide off the stool when he stood, as Charles would have had to. He stripped off his gloves, disposed of them, and hesitated near the door. “Professor… Dare I ask what happened?”

A spike of pain—the first strong emotion Charles had felt all day—needled in between his ribs. He smiled, pressing the heel of his hand to his chest. “No, no. Nothing worth explaining, really.”

Hank loitered for a moment longer, unsatisfied, but finally turned to leave.

Charles stared down at his hands until Hank returned and pushed a mug of coffee into them. Numbly, Charles closed his fingers around it, and craned his head up to look at him. “Thank you.”

With an embarrassed, wordless nod, Hank retreated back to his stool and hunched over the microscope, making a few adjustments to the objective before settling in again.

The coffee was cool enough to drink, so Charles sipped at it until he achieved something more like consciousness, watching Hank as he did so. He did not trust himself to do work just yet, and in any event he was too well-trained to even think of setting food or drink down on the bench, no matter how fatigued he might be.

“Hank,” Charles said, eventually, and the boy looked over to him. “Are you…?” He paused, not sure how to continue, and waved his hand around vaguely in place of words.

Hank waited, and then prompted, “…Am I quiet?”

Charles’ hands relaxed around his coffee mug. “Yes. You’re not… You’re a werewolf, aren’t you?”

“What gave it away?” Hank asked, eyes darting quickly around the lab as if perhaps someone might be eavesdropping behind the biohazard bin.

“Nothing,” Charles said, shaking his head. “I’ve never noticed anything strange, but—” He waggled his fingers near his temple. “I have a, a _thing_.”

Hank nodded, unsurprised. “You’re a telepath. I figured you must be a changeling when that Silence Officer came, especially since you’d been absent prior. Textbook Sight-sickness.”

“You knew about me?”

“Well, I knew that you’d crossed to quiet. I didn’t know that you’d become a telepath.” Hank gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Hard to hide from a telepath.”

“You think very unobtrusively,” Charles said, and then cleared his throat when he realized how strange that must sound. “Why are you hiding?”

The look Hank gave him was exactly the same look he gave the undergraduates when they were being particularly slow to grasp a concept—patient, but also faintly pitying. “I’m a monster. People don’t take kindly to monsters.”

Charles frowned. “I can’t think of you as a monster.”

Hank shrugged again, and hunched his shoulders. “Doesn’t really matter.”

“Oh.” Charles thought for a moment. “… _Is_ there a textbook?”

“No.”

“Oh,” Charles said again, disappointed.

 

46

 

The caffeine and nap worked well enough that Charles could occupy the rest of his day with work, though his wits still felt blunted and slow to react. At the very least, there were enough of those menial tasks Hank simply didn’t have the extra hands to deal with left over from the week before, and it kept him busy until it was time to go home.

Charles did not go home. Instead, he crossed the street and went to Euston Station, where he took the next train on the Victoria line toward Brixton. He stood amidst the influx of people just freed from their jobs, swaying with the movement of the car, head slightly tilted as he listened. The night before, it had been almost too much for him; now, even with more people, he found that he didn’t mind so much.

He emerged, eventually, to a cloudy evening at Fulham Broadway Station, where he waited a while until one of those ubiquitous black cabs stopped for him, its yellow light brilliant in the indecisive gloom.

Charles lowered himself gratefully into the back seat. “Glenrosa Street, please.”

The cab pulled out and Charles settled back to watch the buildings go by. He shifted a little, folded his arms together, and rested his forehead against the window.

It was then that the cab began to slow, retreating over to the side of the road, where they stopped. Charles sat up, looked around just to be sure, and leaned between the front seats. “Excuse me, but we’re nowhere near Glenrosa.”

In response, the driver took his hands off the wheel, lowered his chin to his chest, and appeared to fall asleep.

Charles reached forward and prodded at the driver’s shoulder, but he didn’t stir. Tentatively, he pressed his fingers to the driver’s neck, and was relieved—though no less confused—to find a pulse.

The rear door opposite clicked open, and Silence Officer Moira MacTaggert swung herself down to sit beside him. A moment later, a second woman slid into the passenger seat, kneeling on one leg so that she could face back toward him. The driver slept on, oblivious.

Charles looked between them, feeling cross. “Are you here for a second go at convincing me to turn against my friend?”

“Hardly. I know a lost cause when I see one,” MacTaggert said, and glanced at the other woman, who cleared her throat delicately and leaned past the headrest of the passenger seat, hand extended into the back of the cab.

“I’m Jean Grey,” she said, smiling reassuringly. Reluctantly, Charles shook her hand. “I’m not here to convince you to do anything, Professor Xavier. I’m here because there is information you need to know that might save both your life, and the lives of many others.”

Charles regarded her narrowly. “Are you a Silence Officer, too?”

“Not just that,” Jean said. “I’m like you.”

He felt her, then, her thoughts a clear river flowing through the banks of his mind, and if the banks of a river could cringe back—well, it was enough to startle anybody. Charles’ eyes widened, and he looked her over again. “You’re a telepath!”

“In part.” Her smile turned wryly secretive. She didn’t look psychic, any more than he must, he supposed. She was very young; younger than his first impression—less than twenty years old, he thought. Her fiery red hair was tied into a much older woman’s bob, and that was part of it, but… not all. “I trained with the Silence, in case you needed an endorsement.”

“Noted,” Charles said, voice dry. “Though my answer remains the same. What did you want so desperately to tell me?”

Now Moira spoke. “Your friend, the dragon.” She held up a hand to intercept his protest. “I can accept that at face value; Ms. Grey tells me it’s true.”

Charles glanced at Jean quizzically, but her face—and the wall of her thoughts—remained amicably blank.

“It’s within our power to change your mind, but we won’t. The fact is, our organization has determined that your acquaintance with him might someday prove productive. That said…” MacTaggert turned her attention to Jean again, while Charles looked on, still numbly surprised to hear his relationship evaluated so… efficiently.

Jean leaned forward again, her face and mind projecting seriousness. “Tell me, Professor Xavier; what do you know about demons?”

Charles blinked at her. “In practice, nothing. In theory… Only that they’re bad.”

“ _Very_ bad,” she confirmed briskly. “They’re powerful, highly dangerous beings comprised of intensely negative passions, unable to feel or think past anything but the cruelty, hate, and pain they’re spun from.”

“That does sound unpleasant,” Charles said.

“Very,” MacTaggert agreed. “We haven’t had one in London since the last war, but it wiped out a sixth of our people and more than fifty civilians, too. I was there—the bodies didn’t take up a lot of space, after.”

Jean stepped in smoothly to say, “So my real question, Professor, is this: where do you think these demons come from?”

Both women stared at him expectantly; Jean with all of her care and sympathy, MacTaggert with her cop’s frank patience. Charles remembered why he hated these kinds of questions. “I would have assumed that they either popped into existence or came from other demons, but since you went through so much effort in delivering this information, I’ll let you correct me.” Charles crossed his arms and waited.

They exchanged glances, and then Jean said, “Demons are created from other beings. When you and I get sad or angry, we handle it however we can and then we either get better or we… _don’t_. When a magical creature is pushed past its limits, on the other hand, they _change_.”

“What are you saying?” Charles asked, feeling cold.

She glanced down, thinking, and then chose her words carefully. “I’m saying that if you were to take a dragon, and then tormented that dragon beyond its psychological endurance… You wouldn’t have a dragon anymore.”

“Half of London could be destroyed, easily,” MacTaggert added, leaning in. “And that’s if we managed to stop him right away.”

Charles looked at them both, from one to the other and back again. “You can’t be serious. Erik is—I know he’s in pain, I’ve felt it, but… But he’s a _person_. He has good in him, too. He has free will.”

The two Silence Officers exchanged another glance; pityingly, this time.

“Except he’s not a person,” Jean told him, softly. “He’s a dragon. He can’t rationalize and compartmentalize because his emotions are all he _has_. He won’t get better, and from what I’ve managed to read from him, it won’t be long until he gets worse— _much_ worse. You might not be able to stop what happens then, but if you don’t at least try, then you’ll have had a hand in it.”

Charles wanted to argue, to tell her that she was wrong—except that Erik’s words repeated in his head, saying: _I_ am _my mental state. My body and mind are the same_.

So, his voice quiet with defeat, Charles asked instead, “How could I stop something like that?”

MacTaggert sighed wearily. “That’s the real question. Short of killing him…” She shrugged.

“No, I won’t do that,” Charles said. “I can’t murder someone for something they haven’t done yet.”

MacTaggert raised her eyebrow in such a way that it was clear she doubted his willingness to kill even _after_. “Just remember what we told you today, and keep it in mind. I know you’re a moral person, so I won’t bother lecturing you about your responsibility to the lives of this city. Take this as advice, instead—the worst kind of demon is the one who knows your name.”

She opened her door, and in the front of the cab Jean did the same, climbing out onto the pavement.

MacTaggert bent down before she shut the door. “Be safe, Professor Xavier, and good luck.”

Charles raised his fingers in an unenthusiastic wave and watched as they walked to a sleek car parked behind the cab, got into the back, and drove away. Seconds later his own driver stirred awake, reset the meter, and turned the cab back out into the street.

 

47

 

At long last Charles made it to Glenrosa Street, where he knocked on the door to Raven’s flat. It swung open almost immediately, and Raven, wearing her human disguise, hung in the threshold for a moment to look him over.

“Oh, _Charles_ ,” she said, and folded herself around him. Charles clung to her, chin hooked over her shoulder, and squeezed his eyes shut as she rubbed his back soothingly. “Who was it? Do I have to rip out someone’s soul? I will if you ask me to, you know.”

Charles’ lips stretched into an involuntary grin and he gasped out a chuckle. “No, no, you can leave everyone’s soul intact. I’m fine, really.”

“You left a message that sounded like you were half-dead and then dragged yourself an hour away to see me. You can’t even go two blocks out of your way to shop for furniture, Charles. Don’t try to tell me you’re fine.”

His grin eased into a fond smile, and Charles gave Raven a last squeeze before pulling out of her arms. “Indeed. Let’s go inside, shall we?”

She guided him into her comfortably cluttered home, took his coat, and then bullied him into her squashiest armchair. “I’ll make hot cocoa, okay? Then you can tell me about it.”

Charles nodded, and she went over to her kitchen, which was part of that same room. She hummed softly, wearing gloves over her scales as she stirred milk in a saucepan on the stove. The smell of it helped, a little, and when she spooned in the cocoa powder and sugar he closed his eyes.

A few minutes later Raven clicked the gas off and poured the cocoa into two generously-sized mugs, which she sprinkled cinnamon into. She carried them over and presented both to him.

Charles took the yellow-and-blue striped mug, leaving her the red, and held it under his chin to inhale the steam while it cooled. “Thank you.”

Raven made a disgusted face at him as she dragged a footrest over. She sat down on it, her knees close to brushing Charles’, and said, “Given the number of handkerchiefs you sacrificed though my teenaged years, I think I owed you, anyway. Now tell me—who was it?”

Charles drew breath, and then let it out in a long sigh. “Erik.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed. “I _knew_ it. I knew he had to be up to no good! Did he hurt you?”

“No.” Charles shook his head emphatically. “No, no. It wasn’t his fault, just…” He sighed again, a long, shuddering exhale. “He kicked me out of his flat last night, after I tried to… you know. Make it with him.”

“Oh.” Raven’s yellow eyes flicked over him, checking him for damage just in case, and thankfully missed the claw marks under his sleeve. “I’m sorry, Charles.”

He shook his head again, more slowly now. “It’s not the first time I’ve been refused, of course, and he was better about it than most, but… I don’t know. It’s never kept me up at night before.”

“Because he’s your mentor, maybe?”

Charles ducked his head down, grinning ruefully. “No, you’d only think I’d have so much sense. I’ve tried that before, too. I think… maybe because he didn’t know. I was careful; I tried to give him every opportunity to back out, but he didn’t even know what I was doing until…” He hesitated, and shrugged to indicate that she should be able to guess.

Raven nodded, and pursed her lips, turning the red mug between her hands. “…I feel like now might be a good time to tell me what Erik is, if you’re not still keeping that secret.”

Looking up at her, Charles was silent for a moment. He moistened his lips. “Erik is… a dragon.”

She raised both of her eyebrows, waiting for the joke, and then raised them still higher when she realized he was being serious. “Charles, are you for real? Do you even know what you just said? Are you _sure_?”

He gave her a _look_ and tried a sip of his hot cocoa, which turned into a draught when it proved both cool enough to drink and also, most importantly, delicious. “Yes, I’m pretty sure I can recognize a dragon when I see one.”

“Well, sure but—but that’s just it! Charles, no one’s verified a dragon sighting in… _centuries_ , now. They’re even rarer than unicorns! You’re sure he’s not a wyrm, or a wyvern, or a—a shapeshifter, or something? Maybe just a chronic liar?”

“I’m as sure as my judgment of reality itself.” Charles tapped his fingers to his temple. “I’ve been inside his head, Raven. I’ve slept beside him at night and flown on his back. Erik is what he says he is.”

“You’ve—” Raven choked to a stop, staring at him wide-eyed, and then she laughed. “You found one of the rarest creatures in the world and tried to shag it! Oh, suddenly my love life doesn’t look so bad.”

Charles sulked as well as he could in a squashy armchair. “Remember I came over because I needed cheering up, not teasing.”

“I’m sorry,” Raven said, touching her hand to his knee. “I know, and you never laughed at me when I had these problems. You were also brutally honest with me, if I recall correctly, so I will be too.” She inhaled, gathering her courage. “Charles, I think this is serious. I think you might be in love.”

This surprised a laugh from Charles. “What—you can’t be serious! I’ve known Erik for a _week_.”

Raven regarded him gravely. “Trust me; it can happen even faster than that.”

“I think I’d know if I were—in _love_ , of all things,” Charles said, crossing his legs and then smoothing his trousers out over his thigh. “I’m as much of a romantic as anyone—” he ignored the snorting noise she made— “but people mistake infatuation for love all the time. I told you, I’m fairly certain it’s only guilt at accidentally taking advantage of our cultural differences.”

“Oh, Charles,” Raven repeated, sadly. “You’re about to inflict a lot of suffering on yourself.”

 

48

 

Charles went straight to bed after returning home. He had no memory of falling asleep, but his eyes snapped open some time later. After a moment of disorientation, he realized why—there was someone tapping at his balcony door, which was locked. The noise was soft, but apparently still enough to wake him up.

 _In love_ , Charles thought distastefully, and rolled over. The tapping stopped and a little while later Charles fell back into sleep.

 

49

 

All next day in the lab, Charles composed conversations in his head: all different ways of explaining to Erik that he was sorry, that he could be sure it would never happen again and that they could go back to their previous relationship without ever mentioning it again. That last was purest fantasy, of course, and Charles knew it—there would be no more little touches or shared sleep—but it was a pleasant fantasy nonetheless.

He went home to his flat and made a pot of tea. He read with only half of his attention spared for the journal on his lap, stirring his tea well beyond any need for it.

The sun set, but the sky was still light in the west when Erik landed on his balcony and assumed human form. Charles stood, planned speech falling into place in his head, but the words crumbled away when he saw the grim mask of Erik’s face.

 

50

 

Erik waited for Charles to open the door, then slipped in through that narrow space and closed it again behind himself. He turned to Charles, who stared up at him, shifting apprehensively.

“Something very bad has happened, and we need to talk,” Erik said, taking hold of Charles’ shoulders and guiding him back to the armchair. The backs of Charles’ knees hit the cushion and he sank down onto it, a look of astonishment on his face.

Erik paced away again, eyes darting around the mostly-empty flat. He went to the bedroom door and switched the light on, going in to walk a circle between the bed—which he tried to ignore even as he ducked to glare under it—and the closet, which he stuck his head into briefly before leaving to give that same treatment to the bathroom.

He came back out into the living room, where Charles arched an eyebrow in his direction. “Lose something?”

Erik merely glanced at him before reaching up to pull the curtains closed. Then he crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, where he could see out to the balcony through a small gap. He looked back at Charles. “You may use the lamp.”

Charles raised both of his eyebrows now, but reached over with a sigh to switch on the lamp. “What is it?”

“ _Schmidt_. He’s sent me here to bring you to him.”

Charles was silent for a moment. “Does he know about your plan?”

“I don’t think so; at least, not specifically,” Erik said, shaking his head. At least, he dearly hoped not; he wouldn’t put it past Schmidt to lure them both in before making his own retaliatory move. “But he knows your address; he knows that you’re my neighbor and that I tried to shield you from him. I’m sure he knows at least that I care more for you than most humans. He would have ordered me to take you even if he didn’t want you.”

Charles nodded stiffly. “What do we do?”

“I have no choice.” Erik’s voice was bleak, and he checked out the window to avoid seeing the disappointment in Charles’ eyes. “He told me to bring you, and I have no choice. Even if you refuse.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “Those two from the other night—they said I could answer him however I wanted. That it was just talking.”

Erik bared his teeth in a grin. “You don’t know Schmidt. I can’t protect you from him, but I can warn you: Schmidt is evil. He looks like a normal man, and he speaks in terms of business and generosity, but have no doubt that he is very likely the greatest evil you’ll ever know.”

Charles tipped his chin down, regarding Erik frankly. “I know, Erik. I believe you.”

“But that’s just it,” Erik said, pushing away from the wall to pace around again. Standing in one place felt too much like waiting. “You _don’t_ know. I haven’t toldyou!”

“What haven’t you told me?” Charles prompted gently, bending forward to prop his elbows on his knees.

Erik stopped suddenly, whipping around to face him. “My favor—your _job_. So listen closely now, because this isn’t a story I’ll tell again.”

He waited for Charles to nod, and then lurched into speech. “When I met Schmidt… Well. It starts before then, in Germany. Before Germany, because my mate… _Magda_ … She hatched before the unification of the German Empire, and I shortly after.”

He lowered his head, pushing at one of the books on the floor with his bare foot. “Neither of us cared much about the politics, of course. It was our home, and our ancestors had persisted there for centuries, wearing human faces to hide themselves. We inherited all the treasures of a dying race, and we lived well together.

“But then there were the wars.” Erik exhaled slowly, raising his eyes to Charles’. “Human politics. We survived through the first, selling the treasures of our ancestors for a fraction of their value in order to buy our anonymity. We survived through the difficulties of those years that came after, too, and we even hatched a… a daughter.”

Erik closed his eyes, and continued, quieter. He didn’t like remembering it, even now, and it had been a long time since he’d spoken her name. “Anya. She… didn’t make it. It was our fault. We’d seen what was happening and thought we could ignore it as we had before. We believed we were immune, and our delusions were shattered.

“Magda insisted we leave our treasures and home behind; that we leave the country entirely, because it was no longer safe for us. She knew she would soon lay another egg, and neither of us could…” He stopped, because what more could he say? Charles was young, and as far as Erik knew had never sired offspring of his own, but surely he could understand _that_.

“We flew here,” Erik said, walking back to the balcony door. “England had always sounded so defiant, and it was near enough to reach through the skies. When we arrived, however…” He rolled his shoulder in a careless shrug. “It was Europe, but not the Europe we knew. We didn’t speak the language, and the bombs were worse than we’d thought they would be.

“Magda was…” Erik smiled fondly, though it hurt to think of what happened next. “She was always the more cautious of us, and the egg was near. She said we needed someone to help us, and so… _Schmidt_.” He spread his hands wide, his smile turned darkly ironic.

Charles had remained still throughout all of this, but now he roused. “What happened?”

“He…” Erik pulled his lips back over his teeth and snarled, “He _killed_ her! That belly-crawling snake _butchered my mate_ after he’d earned her trust. He butchered her, and he stole from her the one treasure we had left.”

“Your ransom,” Charles realized.

“Our egg,” Erik corrected, softly. “He took our egg, and hid it, and so now I do the bidding of a monster lest he murder the rest of my family, too.” He looked out through the gap in the curtains at the London skyline, and his shoulders sagged. “It’s been more than twenty years since I’ve laid eyes on it, but I sense that it will hatch soon. Within the year, perhaps. It was a risk to seek your help, but…”

“You couldn’t let your child be raised by Schmidt.” Erik turned his head to see Charles watching him, a worried but contemplative frown on his face.

“Yes. Better to see it cracked and dead.” Erik brushed his fingers along the curtain as he turned away and returned to the wall. “So now you know everything. You know what Schmidt is capable of, and you know the favor I would have asked of you.”

Charles stared at him incredulously. “That’s not a favor, Erik—that’s simple common decency!”

Erik watched him for a moment longer, then lowered his head. “Perhaps. But it’s too soon; I wanted to give you time to build your strength, but I’m not sure you’ll ever get the chance.”

Charles stood, and a moment later Erik felt a touch at his shoulder, tentative but real. “I’ll try. Whatever it takes, I’ll try.”

Erik straightened, meeting Charles’ earnest blue eyes—studying his face—and then lifted a hand to cup the hinge of his jaw, as Charles had done to him before everything had gone wrong anew.

He pulled away, then, and snapped the curtains aside. Sliding the door open, Erik turned to Charles. “One other thing, and quickly, because he will be expecting us soon: Schmidt has another telepath already in his service. Guard against her however you can, if you’re able. Also, grab your coat, Charles. It’s cold tonight.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh man, I have no idea why this chapter was so hard to write, but you have both **Tahariel** and that damnable thing called artistic integrity to thank for getting this to you in some form at least slightly more coherent than the interpretive dance version. Not that the interpretive dance version was bad! It just didn't fit well into the narrative flow.

51

 

The view from Erik’s back was just as beautiful the second time, but Charles gave no thought to enjoying it. He clung on tightly, trying to take what comfort he could from the power in the muscles flexing below him. Given what he now knew, it wasn’t enough.

He wasn’t sure what he expected Schmidt’s lair to look like, and it was hard to recognize familiar landmarks from the air, but in a matter of mere minutes Erik began to descend toward a huge white building with a roof ringed by raised windows, which he landed between with plenty of room to spare.

Charles lowered himself carefully off of Erik’s back, wary of slipping on the tiles and falling between the smaller angles of windows, five stories to his death. When he didn’t, he felt safe enough to shuffle a little closer to the edge, hanging onto a bit of fencing as he squinted at the street below. “Piccadilly?”

Erik strode up beside him, thumbs hooked casually around his belt. “And Dover.”

“Mm,” Charles commented, because this was a street he knew—not somewhere far away, or obscure, or hidden underground, but standing proudly in amidst all the trappings of respectability. Well-dressed people walked by on the pavement below, oblivious to the true nature of what they passed.

He shivered. “Let’s get inside, then.”

Erik’s hand on his back directed him toward a dark window, gaping open into the cool night air, and Charles stood in front of it doubtfully. He looked between it and Erik until finally Erik shook his head and crouched down to go first. The blackness closed over him, and he vanished.

Charles waited, heart racing, suddenly and irrationally sure that Erik was gone forever, perhaps killed silently by some trap lurking within—but then that familiar, lean face appeared again, inside now, and Erik extended his hand to beckon for him. “Well? Are you coming?”

“Wouldn’t want to force you to abduct me,” Charles joked, weakly, and took the offered hand, letting Erik steady him as he climbed down into the room. It was no less dark once he was in it, and Charles rearranged his fingers around Erik’s, holding tight.

“It’s all right,” Erik murmured warm into his ear, which inspired Charles to shiver for a wholly different reason. “Schmidt keeps a menagerie of parasitic fiends and vermin close at hand. Your fears are valid.”

“Oh,” Charles squeaked, pressing closer to Erik and staring wide-eyed into the darkness around them. “Excellent. I’m so relieved.”

Erik lead him to a door, and to Charles’ great relief, the hallway beyond was well-lit and clear of anything alive. It took him a moment to realize what was therefore so unsettling about it, but then— _oh_. It reminded him faintly of home. Not his own flat, of course, but the mansion he’d grown up in: all wood paneling, granite floor, and clean white moldings.

Fingers squeezed his own, and Charles looked up to see Erik watching him in concern. Charles smiled weakly to reassure him, though he had little assurance to offer.

He took a deep breath and started down the hallway toward a slim brass elevator door. Erik didn’t correct him, but slid his hand out from Charles’ to pull it open, while Charles moved past him to push the collapsible gate aside. He entered the red-and-gold confines of the elevator first, and held the gate until Erik had joined him. Glancing at the small array of floor buttons, Charles looked to Erik, eyebrow raised.

Erik smiled thinly, reaching his arm past Charles’ body to jab at the button marked, in flowery black script, _1_. It lit up in white and the elevator shuddered as the door outside retreated up into the ceiling.

They stood in uncomfortable silence, watching out through the gate as they descended, and then there was a touch at his arm. Charles jumped, heart racing, and looked down to see Erik lift his hand up level with his elbow, palm-up and fingers spread. His pink human skin melted and blurred, replaced by black scales and long, sharp talons.

Erik lowered his hand again and wrapped those powerful fingers around Charles’ wrist and hand—not as they had been before; not intertwined, but positioned so that it might appear that he was controlling Charles with the strength and threat of his claws.

Charles looked up at Erik and smiled, wrapping his own fingers around one of Erik’s where it lay across his palm. The implication was grim—that a display of friendliness might invite cruelty—but the claws that pricked over his skin were Erik’s real claws, and Charles knew how cautious they could be.

The bell rang as the last door slid into place. Erik opened both gate and door and then pulled Charles along with him into the first-floor hallway. Charles hesitated when he saw they were no longer alone, but Erik tugged on his hand and Charles only barely managed to follow without stumbling.

The people on the first floor looked no different from the people on the street— _almost_ , because some of them were not human. There was no one quite so visually distinctive as the troll and goblin who had attacked him, but Charles could _feel_ the difference, and not only through telepathy.

A woman dressed in a conservative grey business suit approached, them walking in the opposite direction. Charles could not have described her meaningfully to anyone, and she did not even spare a glance toward him, but he was hit by a sudden _need_ for her as sure as gravity, as certain as the progression of a chemical reaction toward equilibrium, and Charles swayed toward her, vaguely aware of the grip around his wrist holding him back, until suddenly—

She passed them, and Charles blinked, dazed, her face already forgotten. Two men followed her, either too engrossed in their conversation to be affected or entirely immune. One of them, whose dark skin was just a shade too green to be natural, dripped with water, leaving small puddles as he walked; the other was pale and sickly-looking but laughed hugely, revealing long, pointed teeth. Charles tried without much success not to stare.

They soon came to a pair of broad white doors, framed by deep red curtains and guarded by a young man with long, wind-tousled hair. This man—though Charles knew well enough that he _wasn’t_ a man—looked them over, visibly unimpressed, and then leaned over to rap on the door with the backs of his fingers.

There was a crumple of misplaced air and then there was a _devil_ standing in front of Charles, and if Charles had been a religious man he might have run screaming right then. Still, he couldn’t help but take a step back when this red-skinned person turned toward him, met his eyes—the other’s were a perfectly ordinary blue—and smirked in amusement.

He turned again, all lanky limbs, and unlocked the double doors with a tiny silver key. Spreading the fingers of one red hand on the leftmost door, he pushed it open with a little sardonic bow, gesturing with a flick of his tail for Erik and Charles to enter before him.

Erik was the first to move, starting forward so quickly that Charles realized this must be a nearly everyday occurrence for the dragon. That knowledge helped, a little, though it did not stop the hairs on the back of his neck from prickling as he eased past the red man.

The door closed behind them, but Charles did not turn to look because there, in front of him, was a man he knew instantly and with complete certainty to be Schmidt himself.

There were other things, too, of course—an expanse of white granite floor, for one, and abstract sculptures framed by the similar whiteness of the walls. There was a woman barely wearing enough to be dressed in white on Schmidt’s left, and a moment later the red man puffed back into existence on Schmidt’s right, framing the rather impractically large wooden desk Schmidt sat behind.

Schmidt himself wore an impeccably tailored white suit, a triangle of wine-red shirt framed between peaked lapels, a scarlet cravat snug around his neck. His expression was a balance of friendliness and businesslike professionalism as he watched Charles approach, and he could have been anyone at all except for two notable details. The first was that he occupied the only chair in the room.

The second was the odd, silvery helmet he wore contoured to his skull, which Charles suspected might have a great deal to do with the utter and ominous silence of Schmidt’s mind.

Erik let got of his hand and Charles glanced back at him, only slightly surprised to see that Erik had returned to his natural form, crouched on his haunches in a way that reminded Charles uncomfortably of a dog waiting for its master’s command. That wedge-shaped head ducked down and nudged into his back, urging him forward.

Charles straightened his shoulders and walked toward Schmidt’s desk, stopping a few awkward feet away. Making no move to stand and shake his hand, Schmidt sat for a moment, grey eyes intent and examining, then turned away to give a significant look to the woman standing next to his desk.

She narrowed her eyes at Charles, and shards of ice prickled at the back of his mind. He frowned, pushing aside the intrusion gently, but firmly.

He’d assumed it was only a test, but her eyes widened in barely-perceptible surprise. She looked back at Schmidt, who nodded as a grin broke out over his face, showing off perfectly white and straight teeth.

“Professor!” Schmidt leaned back to lounge in his chair, hands spread wide, welcoming. “What a fortunate coincidence, that you live right next to my pet’s little den. Very convenient!”

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” Charles said.

Schmidt threw his weight forward, resting his elbows on the desk again. “Of course! I apologize; I must seem very rude, keeping you at that disadvantage, and with this silly helmet too—again, I apologize, but it’s my standard policy around telepaths; I’m sure you understand. I’m Sebastian Shaw, and I’ve brought you here to discuss certain potential business arrangements you might find profitable.”

Charles nodded once. “You want me to work for you.”

Baring his teeth again, Schmidt— _Shaw_ , here—said, “Yes, exactly. You see, I can _use_ a bright young mind like yours, and you will be _amply_ compensated for your time and energy, I assure you. Like my dear Emma, here.” He gestured toward the woman telepath, who smiled in a forcibly polite sort of way at Charles, tilting her head so that the diamonds hanging from her neck and ears shimmered and caught the light.

Charles glanced from Emma and back to Shaw without changing his expression. “Thank you for the offer, but I must refuse.”

Shaw’s grin faded, leaving nothing underneath. “I haven’t made you an offer yet.”

“That’s quite all right. I’m more than happy in my capacity as a professor, so I thought I would simply save you the trouble.”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that, my dear boy,” Shaw said, voice soft as he watched Charles with a new intensity.

Charles raised his chin and arched an eyebrow. “I was informed by your two _goons_ the other night that I had a choice.”

“Yes, well, you must forgive them their petty misunderstandings.” The corner of Shaw’s mouth curled up in a wry smile. “You see, they’re not _wrong_ , exactly—you do have a choice—but here’s where the difference lies.”

Shaw spread his fingers out on the dark wood of his desk and levered himself up to stand crouched before his chair, as if to pounce. His voice was gentle, but his eyes remained cold. “You have a _choice_ , Charles, in that you can either agree to work for me _now_ , or—because it’s quite simply bad business to leave an unaffiliated telepath running around outside—you can agree to work for me _later_ , and since you won’t be one of my people during that time…” He shrugged, and lowered himself back down into the chair. “Well! It’s not in my interest to care what happens to you in the meantime; that is, not unless you _make_ it my interest.”

Charles tugged the edge of his bottom lip between his teeth and was silent, thinking. He had no doubt that Shaw meant every word of what he threatened, just as he had no doubt that “in the meantime” would not be something Charles would spend happily working in his lab until he got tired of waiting. This, he knew, was a man who would have absolutely no qualms about imprisoning a civilian—not personally, of course, because this man in the pristine white suit was not the kind of person who would take part in his own dirty work if he could order someone else to do it, but that wouldn’t be much consolation.

To add insult to injury, Erik might even be the one to lock him up.

Clearing his throat, Charles asked, “Do I have time to consider?”

Shaw waved his fingers dismissively. “Of course. It’s a major career decision; I wouldn’t expect you to decide right this instant. Take a day or two to sort out your affairs and then have Erik bring you back here to give me the news.” With that, he lowered his attention down to the few papers on his desk, picking up a silver pen to twirl between his fingers.

Charles nodded stiffly, then turned on his heel and walked past Erik, who assumed his human disguise and circled around to fall into step beside him. None of Shaw’s people opened the door for them this time, and so Charles turned the handle himself and left, holding his back stiff and straight as he went.

 

52 

 

Erik flew them home. Charles was a silent weight on his back, but that was all right; Erik didn’t feel much like talking, either.

He landed on Charles’ warped balcony, nudged the cracked-ajar door fully open, and slipped inside. Charles did not wait for him to kneel before sliding from his shoulders, and in his haste stumbled over a textbook; Erik hooked the joint of his wing around Charles to steady him.

Charles kept his feet, and lifted his hand to touch the leather of Erik’s wing. His fingers stroked, but then he jerked them away. “Thank you.”

Erik dipped his snout in a nod, folding his wing back to himself, and then _into_ himself, smoothing into skin. His eyes re-focused, smaller and closer together, and he saw Charles staring at him with a blank sort of desperation. Sighing wearily, Erik went to switch on the lamp. “Sit down, Charles.”

Charles jolted into movement, walking stiff-legged to the armchair. Lowering himself down into it, he cradled his chin in his hands, fingers laced over his mouth.

“Charles?” Erik asked, after some time had passed.

Those blue eyes flicked over to him, and Charles dropped his fingers from his lips to speak. “I don’t know what to do, Erik. Nothing in my life so far has prepared me for something like this.”

“Of course not. _I_ should have prepared better.” Erik thought furiously inward, imagining. He had been too soft, too eager to please; if he’d stolen Charles as he’d first wanted to, he might have been able to keep the secret for longer. Charles might have been happy, eventually, except… Could he even _keep_ Charles anywhere he didn’t want to be, without Schmidt’s resources? Could he have looked into Charles’ eyes and told him no, day after day?

Could he have lived with himself if he _had_ …?

“It’s been quite the week.” Erik looked up from his introspection to see Charles’ rueful smile. “What do we do now? We have two days to implement a plan.”

A thrill of fear pierced through Erik. Buried deep within his memory he saw again the iron bars of cages in that dark hole Schmidt used to forget people, casting shadows in the light of his torch. “You have to agree.”

Charles’ smile dropped away, replaced by purest disbelief. “ _What_? Are you mad?”

“He’s not going to let you walk away if you say no,” Erik said, staring intently, willing Charles to _see_. He pushed his memories to the surface, picturing again those rot-blackened fingers wrapped around iron, the creature within pulling itself closer to the very same light that blinded it.

Cringing, Charles turned his head to the side. “I know that. But I’d—I’d rather _I_ go through that torment than be forced to bring it down on someone else. There has to be another way.”

“Brave sentiment,” Erik observed, crossing his arms. “But you’re assuming that you’ll have a mind left to protest with. If you say yes now, you’ll be able to strike back another day.”

Charles’ expression was bleak. “I know, but what do you think happens in the meantime? I’m a telepath, and I can’t be trusted. I don’t quite know how these things work yet, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ll either have to let Frost into my head until she’s satisfied of my loyalty, or my telepathy will be blocked by some application of that helmet. Quite possibly _both_. Whatever the method, they’ll be sure I have no chance to help recover your egg, and I may even be forced to betray you.”

“You couldn’t feel _anything_ from Schmidt?” Erik asked, because this was, after all, the goal.

“Nothing at all. I tried, but I felt… _nothing_.” Charles shivered, though he had yet to remove his coat. “With that helmet in place, I’m afraid I’m of no use to you.”

Erik cursed, and stared down at the carpet. “There’s another option—you could leave. Even Schmidt can’t reach everywhere.”

“ _No_.” The sharpness of it surprised Erik, and he shifted his weight uneasily, watching as Charles continued, “I can’t go free while you suffer here, alone.”

“You’re not obligated to stay. Consider your debt to me forgotten.”

Charles’ jaw tightened in irritation, and his eyes were bright and tense. “It’s not about _obligation_ , Erik, and it’s not even, I’m sorry to say, entirely out of my desire to save an unborn—un _hatched_ —innocent. I’ve felt your pain, remember, and I can’t leave you to it. I _care_ about you, believe it or not.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Erik said, and stepped back to seek the refuge of the wall, hard behind his shoulder. He didn’t want to think about himself, not when he could be thinking about finding his egg and killing Schmidt, and about protecting Charles, now, too. He didn’t want to see what Charles saw. “But it wouldn’t help me to see _you_ in pain. I’m inclined to kill you myself if you don’t leave.”

“It’s my choice, Erik.” Charles leaned back into his chair, crossing his legs. His tongue swept over his lips, and Erik followed the motion with his eyes, stung with the sudden sensory memory of what that tongue felt like. _Not now,_ he told himself, scowling. “I can’t leave you any more than you can leave your offspring. Now; I’m still in contact with the Silence—could they help us?”

Erik frowned. “Those human—” he caught Charles’ glance and trailed off, awkwardly, “… _s_? They may have the capability to destroy Schmidt, but I can do nothing directly without inviting the destruction of my egg.”

“What about without your help, then?” Charles asked, and ignored Erik’s offended hiss. “Don’t show up that day, and be late when he calls. I’m sure that if the Silence knew how much of a threat Schmidt really is—if they knew _why_ —they would extend as much help as they could to get him out of their city.”

“I can’t trust those ignorant fools with my egg!” Erik whirled around to stalk deeper into Charles’ flat. “The Silence only looks out for human interest. They’re petty, blind, and—”

“Erik.” Charles’ soft voice cut through like a slap, and Erik went silent. “Do you really despise _all_ of humanity so much?”

Erik shook his head, picturing his egg traded from one captor to another. “You’re an exception.”

“But I’m really _not_ , Erik.” Charles’ eyes were wide with earnestness. “The members of the Silence don’t fear you because you _could_ kill people, but because you already have. I would feel the same if I hadn’t met you first.”

“You would fear me?” Erik asked, stalking forward. “Would you fight to kill me, as your ancestors did generations ago?”

“No,” Charles said. “No, my friend, I would not. I can’t condone killing anything I don’t understand.”

Erik stopped, studied Charles for a long while, and then nodded, relieved to find that he could believe him. The feeling of relief, however, was too new to sit well on his shoulders. “Very well. Then understand this, at least: I like you. I might trust you, if I dared to use that word again. I am… not so prepared to extend that courtesy to anyone else, just yet.”

Charles pursed his lips. “Fair enough. So, if you can’t trust them, can you at least trust _me_ enough to talk to someone _I_ trust about the possibility of aid?”

While Erik didn’t place much value on _that_ , either, he could see how it might have more weight coming from a telepath. “…Perhaps, yes, but Schmidt will be watching you closely. You’re valuable to him.”

“I may be able to work some way around that, but it will have to wait until morning,” Charles said, and then sighed, closing his eyes and massaging his forehead. “Sometimes I miss being ordinary.”

Erik looked away, swallowing the twinge of hurt those words brought. Of course, he had brought Charles nothing but pain and inconvenience since waking his Sight; it was only natural that he’d prefer his previous life.

“It was a week ago now, wasn’t it?” Charles’ voice drew him back and he saw that he was the subject of a close examination. Then Charles shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I had a—a dream, that night, which I dismissed out of hand because it seemed so unlikely. I dreamt that you came to me where I had collapsed on the floor, and you carried me to my bed.”

Erik nodded. It felt inevitable. “I was going to kill you for having seen me.”

“What stopped you?”

“I wasn’t hungry,” Erik said, and then his stomach clenched as Charles chuckled wryly. “I mean—I’m… not sure why. I didn’t want to.”

Charles arched his eyebrow. “Were you aware of me before then?”

Erik snorted. Oh, he’d _seen_ his neighbor, of course, and had taken note of him for the sake of caution, but Charles had been just another human face. “Of course not; I had bigger things to worry about. Why?”

“Oh, nothing,” Charles said, lifting his hand to press his palm over his mouth, eyes glittering. “I was merely curious.”

Frowning at him, Erik insisted, “It’s impossible to identify a latent changeling, especially one of your age.”

Charles lowered his hand again, revealing his lips, curved in a gentle smile. “It’s all right; I don’t regret that it happened, even with all this unpleasantness. I was able to meet my sister as she really was, and I came to know you. That makes it worth it.”

“You would have been better off without,” Erik told him, flatly. _His_ companycertainly wasn’t enough to make up for the looming shadow of Schmidt.

“Really, Erik, there’s a reason I only have one chair,” Charles said.

Erik narrowed his eyes at the threadbare armchair in question. “Yes, _that_. I could help you get proper furniture.”

“Mm. I might enjoy that, actually. I’ve never picked out my own; you could help me avoid disaster.” Charles tucked his chin down, grinning. “Look at me, talking about shopping while, somewhere out there, Schmidt’s planning just what he could do with another telepath. Hopefully he’s not going to set me up in my underwear and cover me in diamonds. Or any other gemstone, I suppose. It would be undignified.”

Erik blinked away an image of Charles wearing little else than sapphires, pale skin sparkling with faceted light as he sprawled luxuriously over one of Erik’s fine leather armchairs. It wasn’t even remotely sexual, of course—in the old days, it was almost tradition for dragons to cover their human servants in jewels—but perhaps it was… best not to think of it, just in case. It was undignified, after all.

He watched Charles, who in turn stared out the window thoughtfully, bottom lip tugged between his teeth. If only Charles hadn’t gone beyond kissing that night, and hadn’t revealed that… _human_ promiscuity. Erik wanted to kiss him again, wanted to tug that wandering lip between his _own_ teeth, but… But he _couldn’t_.

It wasn’t fair, learning something like kissing and then discovering that it was something he could only do with a mate.

If only Charles were a dragon…

In the silence of the empty flat, Charles’ body made an oddly feral growl. They both looked down at it, and Charles touched a hand to his stomach, self-conscious. “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs holds true, it seems. Ah, that is… I haven’t had supper yet.”

Erik peered at Charles’ belly through the black wool, fascinated by the idea that a human’s stomach might be its own creature, able to communicate with its owner. “Do you need to eat?”

Charles hugged his arms around himself. “…Yes?”

Restraining a smile, Erik turned his attention to Charles’ kitchen. It was essentially the same as his own, with appliances chosen from those same few available to any kitchen, the same cupboards, and an island counter partially sacrificed to books. He rummaged around through it, glancing over boxes and dried spices, bottles of alcohol, plates and pans, and then ducked his head down into the refrigerator to take stock of what there was to work with.

Charles had _food_ , certainly, but there didn’t appear to be any plan to what he had. His vegetables were well on their way to going soft, and his stove was spotless, though Erik had never smelled any evidence of cleaning on Charles. He felt comfortable assuming that Charles never cooked if he could avoid it, and probably favored whatever food came easily to hand. Thus, the apples that had been in the bowl a week prior were gone now, while the chili peppers and tomatoes languished in the vegetable drawer.

Socks scuffed over tile, and Erik glanced back to see that Charles had joined him in the kitchen, now stripped of his coat, shoes, and the outer layers of his suit. “I don’t have much here,” he said, apologetically.

Erik sighed, and reached into the refrigerator to retrieve some of those sorry vegetables he’d seen. He went back to the cupboards to find a cutting board and knife, and Charles hovered nearby as he began to chop garlic and onions into smaller pieces.

“I can do that, if you want,” Charles said, holding his hand ready to take the knife from Erik. “I mean, it’s my kitchen; I don’t want to be a poor host.”

Erik pushed the cutting board over a little, out of Charles’ reach, and eyed the offered hand suspiciously. “If you can reduce a sauce, then go ahead.”

“I could… make less of it?” Charles guessed, watching in fascination as Erik began again to chop.

“Hm,” Erik grunted, and scooped bits of onions and garlic into a neat pile with the side of the knife. “I’ll cook.”

Charles pressed his lips together, probably not intending for it to look like a pout, but he leaned back against the island and hooked his fingers together over his stomach, saying nothing as Erik sliced the bruises from a tomato before dicing it along with chili peppers. The nervous energy of his watchfulness prickled at Erik, but soon Charles relaxed, evidently satisfied that Erik knew what he was doing and was content without Charles’ help.

The silence became a comfortable one, punctuated by the noises of cooking. Glass bottles clinked together as Erik found oregano and olive oil in one spot, olives and pickled capers in another, all nearly untouched by human hands. The pot and saucepan he took from the hanging rack over the island made gong-like noises with their neighbors, and the water he ran from the tap filled the pot with its own strange, metallic music.

Erik paused with the pan in his hands, squinted at it, and scraped at a crusted _something_ with his fingernail. It didn’t come off, so he shrugged to himself and set it on the range to heat over blue flame. As he did so, he glanced over to see Charles watching still, eyes sharp with questions he didn’t ask. Erik smirked to himself and looked away again; the preparation of a meal was its own ritual, not unlike magic, and it seemed even Charles knew this.

He poured olive oil into the pan and swirled it to coat the bottom, and then, to test the temperature, touched the pad of his index finger through the oil to the metal. Hot bubbled snapped against his skin and Charles gasped, grabbing for Erik’s elbow.

Amused, Erik allowed Charles to examine his hand, holding it between his own with an endearing, absent-minded authority. Charles didn’t appear surprised by the sight of Erik’s unburned skin, but when he looked up at Erik his eyebrows were furrowed. “You don’t feel the heat?”

“I feel it,” Erik said, curling his other, non-oily fingers around Charles’. He called the fire to his veins, and Charles’ eyes went wide; his warm human skin felt almost cold in contrast to Erik’s. “…But it doesn’t burn.”

“ _Oh_.” Charles grinned in breathless amazement. “Because you’re a dragon.”

“Indeed.” Then Erik was left looking down at Charles, aware suddenly of how close they were, of how Charles’ fingers were living things against his, and that Charles had tipped his chin up to see him. Erik’s gaze dipped down, settling on those red human lips, parted still from Charles’ earlier grin, fading now.

Charles’ intake of breath startled him into awareness. He’d swayed still closer, using his height to loom over Charles, poised to—

Erik pulled away and returned to his cooking. The water in the pot had begun to make little bubbles along the bottom, and if he wanted the sauce to be done at the same time as the spaghetti he would have to start quickly.

So he ignored that lingering awareness of Charles, every sense still attuned to the peculiar gravity Charles exerted as he huffed in irritation, moved around the kitchen, and then eventually settled back against the island counter. He didn’t speak, but Erik heard every shift and rustle of his clothing and tried to understand meaning from it all the same.

Eventually, mercifully, the meal was complete. Erik drained the water from the noodles and gave the sauce a final stir as he switched off the gas. He sniffed cautiously, and smelled everything as it should be—the sharp sweetness of garlic, the chemical burn of pepper, and mellow acid from the tomatoes and capers. It was not a dish he’d be ashamed to share.

He heard the sound of cupboards opening, and turned to see that Charles was already getting out plates and utensils. This left Erik free to select a drink, so he held a bottle out for Charles to see. “Brandy?”

Charles paused to grimace. “With _pasta_? Eugh. Choose a wine instead. I don’t care what kind, just… _not brandy_.”

Erik frowned at the bottle, then put it regretfully away. He stooped down to look at the wine rack on the counter, and because he knew little about wine relative to other spirits, chose one for the red color of the seal around the cork. “Rothschild, nineteen forty-five?”

Pausing with the stems of wine glasses pinched between his fingers, Charles blinked in surprise. “Really? Hm, well, I suppose. I’ll pour, and you can do the honor of distributing the…” He looked over the stovetop, sniffed doubtfully, and raised his eyebrow. “…Spaghetti _alla puttanesca_?”

“I have no idea. I ordered something like it once,” Erik said, handing off the wine. Charles still looked suspicious, as if maybe Erik had somehow planted all the ingredients in his kitchen beforehand, but Erik merely slipped by him to get at the oven and split the meal.

He turned back again just as Charles lifted the bottle from the second glass, now rather more than half-full with a deep red wine. Replacing the cork, Charles hesitated. “I don’t have a table…”

“It can be an informal supper,” Erik said, and exchanged one of the plates for a glass. He went to the living room, where he waited for Charles to take his seat in the chair before sinking down to sit cross-legged on the carpet. The plate found its home in his lap and he balanced the wine carefully on the cover of a book.

“Oh. You could have used the chair, if you wanted,” Charles said, looking down at him, fork poised and clean. When Erik made a dismissive gesture, he set the plate aside and slid off to join Erik on the floor, shifting around to get comfortable. He reached up for his plate and leaned back against the front of the armrest, smiling. “There; that’s better!”

Sparing a moment to stare at Charles in disbelief, Erik decided he had no reply for that, so he ducked his chin down to focus instead on food. After sampling it, he concluded that Charles had probably been right about the brandy, at least—it probably would have been vile. Erik was no less indifferent toward wine now than he’d been before, but the Rothschild was a pleasant compliment, with a hint of mint to accompany the sweet.

On the floor in front of him, meanwhile, Charles made a little surprised noise of delight. “This is really good! Thank you, Erik.”

Erik glanced up to see Charles smiling at him with the rim of his wine glass perched against his bottom lip, and didn’t mention that there was almost certainly too much salt. “You’re welcome. Really, you’re—welcome _to_ it, any time.”

Those lips widened to reveal a glimpse of teeth, the glass migrating clear. “Thank you, but I wouldn’t want to impose…?”

Shaking his head again, Erik looked back to his pasta. “It’s not an imposition,” he mumbled, though in reality it probably was. He found he didn’t much care.

They ate in silence, then—well, something like silence, because Charles didn’t seem to notice the little hums and croons he made while he ate. Erik endeavored to ignore them but couldn’t quite help the thrill of pride, even though it was nothing so grand as taking Charles into the sky on his back, but only the smallerintimacy of shared food.

Charles finished first, and Erik took the opportunity to sneak glimpses between bites as Charles stared down at the books scattered around his legs, touching the fabric of their covers and caressing the embossed titles to read by fingertip. Erik wanted, suddenly, to lay down among them with Charles, curled between the stacks and around his warm human body in some fiction of safety. At one point he might have, but now—he swallowed, recalling Charles pressed against him, warm in another way, and light-headed dizziness swept over him in a wave.

As if he’d read his mind—and perhaps he _had_ —Charles cleared his throat, and met Erik’s eyes, serious but also, most of all, kind. “I need to apologize, Erik, for what I did the other night. I wasn’t in my right mind and I misinterpreted your interest in me, to your detriment. I’m sorry.”

Erik looked down, hoping for something left on his plate to push around, but there was nothing. “That’s all right. I know it wasn’t anything personal.”

There was a pause, and Erik looked up to see Charles’ confusion, his need to _solve_ shining brightly in his eyes. “How do you mean?”

“You’re human,” Erik said, frowning. “It’s in your nature, isn’t it? Being… indiscriminate.”

Charles tilted his head, eyebrows furrowed. A smile teased at his lips. “Indiscriminate?”

“Yes.” Erik searched for an explanation, feeling suddenly very much as if he were speaking about something he really shouldn’t. “You’re driven to breed, aren’t you? As biological creatures. Even outside your own species.”

He cringed at the sound of Charles’ laugh. “ _What_? Are you saying that I—that being attracted to you is a sort of perverse bestiality brought about by my hormone-saturated biology?” At Erik’s awkward, damning silence, he chuckled. “Oh, my friend, no; I’m sorry, but you’re very much mistaken. While it’s true that I enjoy sex, and I’m far from the church’s ideal of monogamous, joyless procreation, my attempt to seduce you—though ill-advised—was definitely far more personal than physical. I’m long past the age where I’d simply throw myself in the path of any warm body that came along.”

“But I could smell it on you that you already had, that same night,” Erik said, and then, perhaps a little belatedly, schooled his expression into something a little less petulant.

“You could _smell_ —!” Charles interrupted himself with a noise of helpless disbelief, casting his eyes ceiling-ward in surrender, and then smiled ruefully. “I may be an animal, Erik, and I might be driven by chemicals and neurons, but that doesn’t mean that I’m only a sort of biological clockwork. I can choose how to express my interest in someone, and I’d prefer to keep your friendship. I shouldn’t have let anything affect my judgment, no matter how I felt that night.”

Erik narrowed his eyes, studying Charles’ relaxed, casual posture, and recognized it as being that same sort of forcibly nonthreatening posture Erik himself had used when he’d worried Charles might flee. “Am I meant to be offended?”

Hesitating, Charles laid his fingers over each other, and took a deep, indecisive breath. “I… hope that you aren’t. That said, quite aside from the cultural misunderstanding, what I did—well, between two human men, at least, it’s actually illegal. If you wanted, you could have me arrested.”

“I assumed it was normal among your kind.” Which was true enough, in that Erik had simply assumed it to be another one of those mystifyingly _human_ things, but he still found it—not offensive, perhaps, but _bewildering_.

Where dragons where concerned, mating was very literal. As with all things draconic, it was the idea of the act and not the act itself that brought them together; while males and females weren’t really different, they definitely required each other. The thought that it might not be the same for other species was mystifying—it was the sort of eccentric thing gods did, just to prove they were gods and did not follow earthly rules.

Unless… perhaps human males—and maybe females as well—could be… _both_?

This idea was so utterly absurd that Erik found it instantly fascinating, and by the time Charles spoke again, he’d thought of and then quickly discarded an entire system by which human men mated with each other in secret and then transferred the offspring to their wives.

“There’s an ample body of research suggesting that it’s normal behavior among many animals, including humans, but unfortunately it’s still regarded as pathological by most of the Western world.” Charles coughed into his hand, and then slouched, losing some of his lecturer’s demeanor. “So, uh, it’s best not to mention it to anyone. Not that you ordinarily talk to a lot of people, I suppose, or seem to care what they think, but… yes. It is what it is. I hope you don’t think less of me for it.”

“I don’t,” Erik said, though he didn’t smile. Instead, he angled his head to look Charles over again, thoughtfully. “You believed you were taking a risk, didn’t you? By… kissing me.”

“I… Yes, I was, but… I wasn’t afraid of you.” A bashful sort of surprise appeared on Charles’ face, as if he’d only just considered that and was considering whether it might be more polite to be afraid.

Knowing all that he felt he needed to, now, Erik nodded. “You don’t disgust me, Charles. Were you a dragon, and female, I—but I can’t even imagine you in that way.”

There followed a silence in which Erik’s imagination demonstrated that no, in fact, he _could_ imagine, even if the actual mechanics remained a mystery. For what seemed an eternity he saw in perfect detail Charles’ freckled shoulders beneath him, Charles’ body fit neatly into the curve of his stomach, and—though the difference of scale made it almost ridiculous—Erik embedded deep inside, bodies and minds joined in an agony far sweeter than what Charles had found within Erik before.

The pink of Charles’ cheeks slowly deepened to red, and Erik remembered belatedly to hope that he wasn’t reading his thoughts, though he could feel the heat of his own face as it betrayed the wanderings of his mind. He knew better than to hope that Charles wasn’t already thinking much the same thing, but… he didn’t need to know it was mutual.

“You’re more understanding than I had any reason to expect,” Charles said, still blushing furiously. “Thank you.”

Erik looked away, swallowing the ache that had lodged deep in his throat. “Don’t thank me for that.”

 

53

 

It felt wrong, later, to bid Charles a good night and go to sleep by himself, leaving Charles unguarded in another flat entirely, but for the first time Erik felt afraid—not of Charles, but of himself.

The loneliness—that desperate ache—did not go away as he lay in the dark of his room. The problem, he determined, was not that Charles had kissed him. Charles knew what he wanted and, apparently, had no problems with it. He was human and had the flexibility of choice.

Erik, however… Erik was a dragon; he was _purpose_ wrapped in scales and leather. This made him greater, in some ways, than those creatures of mortal flesh, but it gave him fewer… options.

He wanted Charles, and should not have been able to.

Perhaps it was only a symptom of his long isolation, deprived of kind words and touch, worn down by the inexorable weariness of time. Perhaps the way Charles saw him had reached deep within and _changed_ Erik, had primed him to respond to Charles as if he were a potential mate and not what he was.

None of that was supposed to be possible, either, but then again… There had been stories, back when there were still people around to tell them, of dragons and humans being together. They hadn’t been _good_ stories—they had all taken the tone of warnings, of perversion and farce, but they had to be true at least in part.

 Take, for example, the legend of the dragon who’d sought the flattery of humans by masquerading as a poet, fawned over by court ladies for his pretty verses and handsome face until finally he begged one of those women to take the human vows of marriage. The legend went on to detail the extremes of secrecy he demanded, spiriting her to his lair while she slept and forbidding her from ever seeking him out when he did not seek her, all so that she would not know his true shape.

His efforts were in vain, of course, because truth had its way of struggling free and dramatic irony demanded it, but in the end that human woman saw her husband for what he really was and had been appropriately terrified by the discovery. He’d sent her away, forbade her from ever returning, and had then presumably gone about his life in the proper dragon way.

Unless… What if the farce had begun not as a cautionary tale, but as a tragedy?

It had been Erik’s own mother who’d told it to him long ago, back when he’d wanted to know anything and everything about humans. She hadn’t mentioned whether that pair had consummated their marriage, but the fact that they’d been happy had to count for something. It had still been love, hadn’t it, even if it was misguided?

Erik sighed, long and deep as only a dragon could, and rolled over onto his side to sprawl over the pillows. The history between their species was more complicated than what had happened since that time the humans liked to call Enlightenment. They hadn’t always fought: there had been a time before that, a revered Golden Age of dragons far removed from the days of skulking around caves and mauling knights.

Wracking his memory, Erik realized that he could think of no specific examples. The royalty of Tibet, he knew, had once included a number of dragons, and still further east his kind had always enjoyed a unique respect from humanity. He’d heard speculation about fire serpents in America worshipped some centuries past, but if they still existed then they did so deep within their jungle temples. In Europe, however…

With an uneasy rumble, Erik admitted to himself that he didn’t know. His first inclination was to blame humanity for that destruction, but on the other hand, dragons were perfectly capable record-keepers, and a few centuries were not so long a time by draconic standards. _Someone_ should have been able to pass the tale, and should have felt obligated to spread it for the very sake of their history.

Forgetting how to trust, however, might well have been the brutal first casualty of survival.

Erik closed his eyes and pictured Charles beside him, small and soft and too trusting to be afraid, and felt that strange fragile emotion again, which he feared now might not be so unfamiliar after all. A part of him still cringed back—Charles was _human_ , and surely there were still other dragons out there who might look past his scars and accept him, but—Erik wasn’t clockwork any more than Charles was, and he could not desire simply out of _lust_.

It must be possible, then. Whether it was permissible… Well, who was left to object? Either one of them might die soon, and if they could steal some happiness out from the jaws of death—

Still. _Still_ , his thoughts mumbled on, as sleep neared. He needed the opinion of someone who had every reason to argue against it.

He would have to seek out Charles’ wodnic sister, Raven. Surely she could speak sense…

 


End file.
